Aadhaar for student scholarships must

Thiruvananthapuram: The general education department has made it mandatory for students to link their bank accounts with Aadhaar for scholarships, which will be disbursed  through the direct cash transfer system. The Union government had earlier made it clear that  Aadhaar was mandatory for minority pre-matric scholarship for disabled students  and means-cum-merit scholarship distributed through the general education department.

The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has made Aadhaar mandatory for providing scholarships to meritorious school students from the economically weaker sections. The general education department,  in a circular,  asked the school headmasters to direct  the students to link their  bank accounts with the Aadhaar cards at the earliest. The direct benefit transfer or DBT to transfer subsidies was launched by the Union government on  January 1, 2013 to reduce leakages and delays. Aadhaar has also been made mandatory for 12 scholarship schemes administered by the social justice ministry.