No ambiguity in fee reimbursement: CM

HYDERABAD: Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy on Thursday said that stern action would be taken against colleges collecting tuition fees from students eligible for fee reimbursement.He directed officials to remove any ambiguity in this regard and make it clear to colleges and at counselling centres.During a detailed review meeting with the Group of Ministers on scholarships and other top officials on the streamlining of post-matric scholarships in the state, he said the students should not be put to any difficulty by colleges.The officials informed Kiran Kumar that all pending payments towards the fee reimbursement and maintenance charges (RTF and MTF) for 2009-10 and 2010- 11 were paid and the last instalment of Rs `480 crore will be cleared in a month’s time. Now the government will have to pay only this academic year’s maintenance charges. The state government provides scholarships worth `4,000 crore per year to 26 lakh students in around 1,600 courses in 10,934 colleges.This is done in coordination with five welfare departments- social welfare, tribal welfare, BC & EBC welfare, disabled welfare and minority welfare and also with higher education, technical education, school education, board of intermediate education, directorate of employment and training and health department.The chief minister also sanctioned `20 crore for increasing infrastructure facilities in the social welfare department in order to streamline scholarships and responded positively to the proposal of setting up a separate directorate for scholarships.Minister for social welfare Pitani Satyanarayana said that income limit for the SCs and STs has been increased to `2 lakh from the present `1 lakh as per central government rules. For other communities, the income limit remains at `1 lakh.He added that students need to submit income and caste certificates at the time of admission in all courses including EAMCET counselling.He pointed out that about 1.93 lakh eligible students could not get scholarships because of non-submission of income and caste certificate in the last academic year.