The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today asked the Congress government not to resort to blame game and diversionary tactics and instead explain why it had not released Rs 2,440 crore it had budgeted for the SC scholarship scheme for the last three years.
Condemning the Congress government for trying to shift responsibility for its failures on private institutions by giving them deadlines for issuing degrees, former chief parliamentary secretary Pawan Kumar Teenu said the real issue was that scheduled caste students were owed Rs 2,440 crore at the rate of Rs 600 crore per year which was earmarked for the SC scholarship scheme for 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20. “The Congress government and finance minister Manpreet Badal is deviously trying to divert attention from this fact by giving deadlines to private institutions to issue certificates to students. The SAD will take all private institutions who do not issue degrees to SC students to task but at the same time it will not let the government loot SC students to the tune of Rs 2,440 crore”.
Teenu said even as the Congress government had not spent a single rupee from the budgeted amount of Rs 2,440 crore it had now again announced a budgetary provision 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 said adding the Congress government had destroyed the future of four lakh SC students by adopting this anti-Dalit policy.
The SAD leader said it was a shame that ministers Sadhu Singh Dharamsot and Charanjit Channi were part of the meeting presided over by Manpreet Badal in which the rights of Dalits were throttled but they did not have the guts to speak up. “The dalit community wants to ask them what their weakness is. Why didn’t they ask where the money earmarked for SC students had been spent? “Is it because the ministers are themselves knee- deep in corruption as already witnessed in the Rs 69 crore SC scholarship scam in which Dharamsot was indicted and in which a sum of Rs 309 crore is still not accounted for?”
Stating that the Congress government had proved that it was not ready to do anything for Dalits, Mr Teenu said the government was also not ready to implement the new SC scholarship scheme which would shut the doors of higher education to lakhs of Dalit students and cause even more hardship to them. “Other State governments including Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have stepped in to fund the scheme from their own resources but the Punjab government continues to adopt an anti-Dalit stance”, Mr Teenu added.