TheShiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today asked the Congress government not to resort toblame game and diversionary tactics and instead explain why it had not releasedRs 2,440 crore it had budgeted for the SC scholarship scheme for the last threeyears.
Condemningthe Congress government for trying to shift responsibility for its failures onprivate institutions by giving them deadlines for issuing degrees, former chiefparliamentary secretary Pawan Kumar Teenu said the real issue was thatscheduled caste students were owed Rs 2,440 crore at the rate of Rs 600 croreper year which was earmarked for the SC scholarship scheme for 2017-18, 2018-19and 2019-20. “The Congress government and finance minister Manpreet Badal isdeviously trying to divert attention from this fact by giving deadlines toprivate institutions to issue certificates to students. The SAD will take allprivate institutions who do not issue degrees to SC students to task but at thesame time it will not let the government loot SC students to the tune of Rs2,440 crore”.
Teenusaid even as the Congress government had not spent a single rupee from thebudgeted amount of Rs 2,440 crore it had now again announced a budgetaryprovision of Rs 600 crore for the SC scholarship scheme for the year 2021-22.“This amounts to sprinkling salt on the wounds of the Dalit students”, he saidadding the Congress government had destroyed the future of four lakh SCstudents by adopting this anti-Dalit policy.
TheSAD leader said it was a shame that ministers Sadhu Singh Dharamsot andCharanjit Channi were part of the meeting presided over by Manpreet Badal inwhich the rights of Dalits were throttled but they did not have the guts tospeak up. “The dalit community wants to ask them what their weakness is. Whydidn’t they ask where the money earmarked for SC students had been spent? “Isit because the ministers are themselves knee- deep in corruption as alreadywitnessed in the Rs 69 crore SC scholarship scam in which Dharamsot wasindicted and in which a sum of Rs 309 crore is still not accounted for?”
Statingthat the Congress government had proved that it was not ready to do anythingfor Dalits, Mr Teenu said the government was also not ready to implement thenew SC scholarship scheme which would shut the doors of higher education tolakhs of Dalit students and cause even more hardship to them. “Other Stategovernments including Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have stepped in to fund thescheme from their own resources but the Punjab government continues to adopt ananti-Dalit stance”, Mr Teenu added.