SHILLONG: Higher and Technical Education Minister Roshan Warjri said on Monday the students of Meghalaya can now register in the National Scholarship Portal without Aadhaar numbers to avail themselves of the scholarships.
Replying to a call attention motion moved by Titosstarwell Chyne of UDP on the problems faced by students who are not being able to apply for scholarships in the State in absence of Aadhaar, Warjri informed the Assembly on Monday that Aadhaar was not mandatory.
The minister also said UGC had been requested to accord similar exemption in PhD fellowship applications. “The response is still awaited from UGC in this regard,” she added.
Earlier, the Union ministries of tribal and minority affairs had communicated that Aadhaar will be used as an identification for students in all centrally funded scholarship schemes to facilitate direct and timely transfer of scholarships and avoid hardship to genuine and deserving students, the minister said.
For this, applications need to be submitted through a New Scholarship Portal 2.0 launched in July 2016, Warjri said, adding that these decisions of the ministries were communicated to the students of the State through media.
“However, since the Aadhaar enrolment in the State is very low, students here were finding it difficult to register in the portal and accordingly the Chief Minister, in a letter dated August 17 this year, appraised the Union ministers of minority and tribal affairs besides the ministry of human resource development on the low enrolment status of Aadhaar in Meghalaya and sought exemption for the students to provide Aadhaar for applying for scholarships,” the Minister said.
Warjri said subsequently exemption was provided to the beneficiaries of the state to register in the national scholarship portal without Aadhaar.
