SC students gherao Dharamsot residence, ask where Rs 327 crore due to them has disappeared
SC students gherao Dharamsot residence, ask where Rs 327 crore due to them has disappeared
The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today extended its support to scheduled caste students who did a ‘gherao’ of the residence of Welfare of SC’s minister Sadhu Singh Dharamsot to protest against the Congress government’s refusal to release the Rs 327 crore received from the centre for post-matric scholarship to SC students.
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SC students gherao Dharamsot residence to ask about 327 crore[/caption]
Three SAD legislators representing the dalit community – Pawan Tinu, Dr Sukhwinder Sukhi and Baldev Khera today staged a sit in at the residence of Dharamsot here and asked him to explain where the Rs 327 crore received for SC scholarship from the centre more than three months back had disappeared.
Holding placards hundreds of SC students staged a dharna outside the Congress minister’s residence and later in front of the ministerial complex to demand not only immediate release of the central grant but also State assistance of Rs 68 crore as per the scheme. The students, while raising slogans against Sadhu Singh Dharamsot, condemned him for changing his stance every day. They said the minister had first promised to release scholarship grant in February this year, then promised the same in the Vidhan Sabha in March and then shifted the date to September 30 during a statement given to the media in August. “Now Dharamsot has given a fresh statement saying the money will be released in December”, they added.
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SC students gherao Dharamsot residence to ask about 327 crore[/caption]
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SC students gherao Dharamsot residence to ask about 327 crore[/caption]
The students said Dharamsot’s statement was also against the written assurance given by chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh that the Scholarship amount would be released soon. Stating that more than one lakh dalit students had been unable to take admission in colleges this year due to the Congress government’s refusal to release funds of the same, they said now another two lakh students faced a bleak future with college managements refusing to let them sit for examinations next month unless they paid the tuition fee.
Stating that the SAD would not let the Congress government get away with this, Pawan Tinu said the party would support students in ‘gherao’ of Dharamsot whenever he came out in the public and would force him to explain why he had allowed misuse of Rs 327 crore meant for SC students. He said the Congress government was not only playing with the future of SC students but had even failed to release Rs 22 crore to backward class students, also under the post-matric scholarship scheme.
The SAD leaders demanded that the government immediately direct all educational institutions not to force dalit students to pay tuition fee themselves and not stop them from sitting in the forthcoming examinations.
Meanwhile protesting students held up placards asking Dharamsot not to hide behind the excuse of audit of tuiton fee paid to colleges in the past. They said Dharamsot had been issuing statements of a fraud of Rs 300 t Rs 500 crore depending on when he made the statement but had failed to come out with an audit report since the last one and a half years. They demanded that the government should recover dues from institutions and plough them back to the students.
-PTC NEWS
