DC Debate: Financial Assistance for students of Telangana

Hyderabad:

TRS confessing to FAST error:

By deciding to scrap the Financial Assistance for Students of Telangana (FAST) scheme, the TRS government is, in a way, confessing to a major mistake that almost cost lakhs of students an academic year.

Every political party that comes to power implements its own agenda and policies. However, the new policies are not implemented with just one stroke of a pen. Democratic form of government is a continuous process. The change in policies does not necessarily change the systems and procedures of a government.

The fee reimbursement scheme was a new scheme which was introduced by the then Congress government in undivided AP in 2008. It was a well conceived scheme that covered over six lakh students in the professional colleges, including about 1.5 lakh students in engineering colleges. It remained in implementation till the formation of Telangana on June 2, 2014.

However, immediately after coming to power, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao started behaving as if a new country was born.  He began a drive to replace everything that was in existence in the undivided state. He did not even bother to check whether or not the scheme was really effective and beneficial for the students. The TRS government came up with a fancy title ‘FAST’ and tried to replace the fee reimbursement scheme with the same.

The new government linked the domicile issue and offered to extend scholarships to only those students whose parents had their roots in Telangana prior to 1956, when the combined state of Andhra Pradesh was formed. But it failed to explain the procedures or systems through which it planned to implement the scheme. It raised an avoidable controversy and all the students, their parents and college managements were put to hardship.

The TRS government simply scrapped the fee reimbursement schemewithout even realising its consequences. This was never done in the past. There are no precedents wherein the implementation of a scheme was completely stopped without preparing an alternative. This scheme was directly related to lakhs of students and therefore, lakhs of families and hundreds of colleges suffered due to a wrong move by the state government.

Mr Rao’s immature moves created confusion among the students, parents and college managements. Md Shabbir Ali, former Congress Minister

Decision will help students:

The Telangana state was created on June 2, 2014, after decades of struggle by students, employees and the public in general as well as a 14-year-long peaceful movement led by K. Chandrasekhar Rao specifically. Mr Rao understands the aspirations and dreams of the deprived students and unemployed of this region better than any other person. He has formed a committee to formulate the guidelines for Financial Assistance of Students of Telangana (FAST) scheme in place of the existing fee reimbursement policy.

The earlier government started the fee reimbursement policy initially with an amount of Rs 500 crore which has raised to Rs 5,000 crore whenit stepped down. The present government wanted to carefully examine and study the existing reimbursement policy and constituted a committee for guidelines for better implementation of the scheme to help the needy Telangana students.

The Opposition parties and some sections, who opposed the formation and development of Telangana, are always criticising the new government. They even even doubted the formation of committee by citing that the new government has intentions to reduce the number of beneficiaries. The people who are criticising the very formation of the Telangana should understand the difference between the admission policy and fee reimbursement policy. The Telangana government has made it clear that it will follow 371(D) for admission into Telangana institutions for the next 10 years as stipulated in AP Reorganisation Bill. The 371(D) only clarifies on local status, which is the basis for the admission procedure only. It is not for any other welfare benefit. The welfare measures of any state are evolved by its head of the state based on the needs and requirements of its people and societies.

After requests from many organisations and the recommendations from the committee, the Telangana Cabinet, led by the CM, thoroughly discussed the matter and decided to continue the existing policy of reimbursement. The bold decision taken by Mr Rao is magnanimous, and it will help all the students who join Telangana institutions under 371(D). The students and politicians from AP should appreciate the judicious decision taken by Mr Rao, which they had never even dreamt of. It shows the Chief Minister's magnanimity in extending the financial benefits. Palla Rajeswar Reddy, TRS Politburo Member