Kerala govt. allocates ₹200 cr. more for post-matric scholarships of OEC category students

The Kerala government on Friday said it has allocated an additional ₹200 crore for the post-matric scholarship for students belonging to the Other Eligible Communities (OEC) category.

With this, the government has allocated ₹5,326 crore this year, till now, on scholarships for Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC) and OEC categories, a statement issued by the office of Finance Minister K.N. Balagopal said.

Mr. Balagopal said that the ₹200 crore was made available for the distribution of scholarships to students belonging to OEC and Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) categories.

This year, ₹240 crore was allocated in the budget and it was allowed earlier.

“Now ₹200 crore has been allowed as an additional allocation,” the statement said.

With this, the arrears under this category can be cleared in full, it said.

It further said that last year, ₹40 crore was allocated in the Budget for the scholarships, but the government ended up distributing around ₹358 crore which included arrears of previous years.

The statement also said that while the first Pinarayi government distributed ₹3,853 crore on scholarships for students from the marginalised communities, during the Oommen Chandy government, only ₹2,069 crore was spent.