Cash incentives for SC, ST students

Started by sajiv, May 23, 2009, 11:21 AM

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sajiv


BANGALORE: The State Government will give cash incentives for all meritorious Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students pursuing higher studies. This was decided at a Cabinet meeting here on Friday.

Students who passed SSLC with more than 60 per cent marks will get Rs. 5,000 and those scoring over 75 per cent marks will get Rs. 10,000.

Eligible students will have to produce proof of having obtained admission in a college to claim the incentive.

Briefing the press about the decisions taken at the Cabinet meeting, Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Shobha Karandlaje said the Government was thinking of providing more incentives to SC and ST students pursuing higher education (postgraduation). About 36,000 students (nearly 16,000 boys and 20,000 girls) who passed SSLC with more than 60 per cent marks will benefit and Rs. 12.50 crore had been allocated for this.

Toll rate
The Cabinet fixed the toll rates for nearly 10,000 km of State highways and major district roads which would be upgraded to two-lane and four-lane highways under the private-public-partnership module.

However, the toll would not be applicable to the existing State highways upgraded under the KSHIP (Karnataka State Highways Improvement Project) funded by the World Bank.

Ms. Karandlaje said the toll would be Rs. 65 paise a km for light motor vehicles plying on the proposed four-lane roads and 50 paise a km for the two-lane highways, Re. 1.05 (four-lane) and 75 paise (two-lane) for light commercial vehicles, Rs. 2.20 (four lane) and Rs. 1.50 (two lane) for buses and trucks and Rs. 3.45 and Rs. 2.25 for the heavy vehicles carrying machinery and so on.

The Government would enter into an understanding with private parties for upgrading the State highways and major district roads. The Cabinet decided to allocate Rs. 250 crore for the farm loan subsidy scheme and around six lakh farmers would benefit from the same. The Government had announced in the Budget that farm loans would be extended with interest rate of 3 per cent though nationalised banks. This would be apart from the nearly 13 lakh farmers who borrowed from cooperative institutions.

The Government would now enter into an understanding with the nationalised banks to extend a loan of not more than Rs. 50,000 a farmer for which the Government would make good 4 per cent difference amount in interest.

The other important Cabinet decisions included extending the "nali-kali" activity based programme (funded by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan of the Union Government) to all the 49,000 Government primary schools from the present 14,000 schools and celebration of one year of BJP rule on May 31 in Bangalore (National High School ground) during which several new programmes would be announced.