To placate youngsters agitating for reservation, the Gujarat government on Thursday announced a Rs. 1,000-crore financial package to support students in their higher education.
It also relaxed the age limit for government jobs from 28 years for the general category to 33 years and from 33 years to 38 years in the reserved category.
Chief Minister Anandiben Patel said that in the next three years, the government would increase the number of medical seats by 1,000 by opening medical colleges through the public-private partnership.
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“The government has decided to pay 50 per cent fees of the medical college students a year, while Rs. 25,000 each will be provided to students of engineering courses a year,” Ms. Patel said, at a meeting with educationists, social workers, academics and owners of private and self-financed colleges.
The ongoing Patidar agitation has revealed that higher education has become expensive because of the self-financing and private colleges that have come up in the last decade.
“We received information on the costs of higher education. So we decided that the government should support students in multiple ways, including by paying 50 per cent fees, one-time financial assistance for buying books and stationery and Rs.1,200 per student per month for 10 months a year for those who stay in hostels,” the Chief Minister said. Around 70,000 students would benefit from the package from the current year. “This package is meant for students of all categories, but the annual income of parents should not exceed Rs. 4.5 lakh,” she said.
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The government also directed private universities and self-financing colleges not to charge more than Rs. 100 for admission form for any course. “We came to know that some colleges were charging Rs.1,000 or even Rs. 2,000 for admission forms. We are directing them to charge only Rs. 100 a form, as is the norm in government colleges,” she said.