Scholarship Funds for students from marginalised communities underutilised, govt data shows

Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI (M))Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament John Brittas, referring to the government data released as a reply to parliament question, lamented that the money set aside for the Scheduled Castes (SC), other backward classes (OBC), economically backward classes (EBC) and denotified tribes (DNT) students have not been fully utilized. In a letter addressed to the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, 11th March, Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale, shared information about different scholarships available for students of SC OBC EBC and DNT in the realm of higher education along with the allocation and the usage of the scholarship funds.

Money in the thousands of crores reserved for the scholarships of SC OBC EBC, and DNT students remain unspent, Brittas wrote in a post on X. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment was given a total budget of Rs 14,164.42 crore according to the figures. The department actually made the expenditure of Rs 8,679.02 crore in 2024-25.

This included proposals worth Rs 9,163.98 crore but utilization was only Rs 8,008.79 crore. Similarly, Rs 8,874.14 crore was the planned amount, while Rs 7,762.82 crore was spent. At the same time, Rs 8,165 crore was planned and Rs 6,372.38 crore spent in 2022-23. The figures show that a sum of Rs 4,446.24 crore was used in 2021-22 out of Rs 6,220.62 crore allocated.

Furthermore Brittas highlighted that there has been an alarming drop in the number of scholarship recipients among various segments over time.

The official reports show that the number of SC pre-matric scholarship beneficiaries went down from 31.22 lakh in 2020-21 to 21.65 lakh in 2024-25, whereas the SC post-matric recipients have fallen marginally from 50.16 lakh to 48.04 lakh. Actually, the reduction was even more serious for the OBC/EBC/DNT groups students: pre-matric beneficiaries were cut by over half from 54.95 lakh to 20.61 lakh, and post-matric beneficiaries from 45.45 lakh to 24.53 lakh.

“Millions of students have simply disappeared from scholarship rolls. For marginalized students, this is not just a statistic - it is lost opportunity,” he said.

Meanwhile, The Hindu reported that the Union social justice ministry also said that it is planning to raise the annual family income eligibility criteria for post-matric scholarship schemes for students from marginalised categories from Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 4.5 lakh from the 2026-27 fiscal year onwards.

Informing a departmentally related House panel, the government has also noted that widespread revisions are being planned for various scholarship schemes administered for students from SC, ST, OBC, and DNT communities, the report said.