Dimapur, Oct. 10 (EMN): The education authorities have responded to the complaints raised by the Nagaland University Students’ Union at Lumami concerning the alleged delay in disbursement of scholarship.
The department of Higher Education, the implementing agency of the state merit scholarship, has issued a clarification that the minimum percentage of marks required for the award as well as renewal is to maintain 70% marks at all levels both for 1st and 2nd year. This condition is clearly mentioned in application guidelines, updates from the DIPR conveying the clarification, stated on Wednesday.
The director of Higher Education, Kuholi Chishi was stated to have issued a statement explaining that unlike other universities, Nagaland University has been following the 7-point grading scale system for undergraduates.
“As such, only those students securing grade ‘A’ or ‘O’ can be considered to have secured a percentage of 70% or more. Hence, state merit scholarship was awarded to only those securing either ‘A’ or ‘O’ grade. However, it was later found that this grading system does not truly reflect the actual percentage secured by the students,” the DIPR stated.
“Therefore, the directorate of Higher Education has taken the extra responsibility to rework the calculation of the actual percentage secured by the students from the rejected list. This manual process of recalculation from each form for the actual percentage secured was highly time consuming.”
Further, after going through each application form, an additional 253 applicants were found to be qualifying for the state merit scholarship, the updates stated.
“Hence, the additional list of 253 students has been put up for government approval. As and when the approval is received, the amount will be credited to the beneficiary’s account. All these facts regarding the issue have been made known to the students’ representatives in the month of August.
The department is trying its best to see that deserving students are not victimised, and so the department seeks the cooperation and understanding of all,” the DIPR added.
A section of students at Nagaland University had expressed resentment that their scholarships for 2017-18 have not been release by the authorities. The Nagaland university Students’ Union at Lumami (NUSU-L) had issued a press release expressing displeasure, and threatening to take an own course of action should the government fail to address the matter.
The NUSU-L had expressed dismay at the department of Higher and Technical Education allegedly for failing to disburse the postgraduate scholarship for stated session. ‘The NUSU (L) in the mid of August met the concerned authority regarding delay of scholarship and to our dismay it was found that the scholarship forms of the students have been rejected on the basis that the students percentage did not fulfil the criteria for merit scholarship,’ the union had stated in a press release.
“But, this was not the case as most of the student’s percentage were eligible for merit scholarship. After a thorough deliberation, the authorities assured that they’ll probe into the matter and deny no students of their rightful scholarship. However, it has been a month and a half and there has been no sign of positive development from the concerned authorities.”
The students’ union was of the opinion that the department was “well appraised” that most of the students rely on their scholarship “for payment of their annual fees and fulfilling other academic needs.”
