Staff Reporter
ITANAGAR, 9 May: The education department on Monday informed that the state government has released the stipends for 16,374 students, amounting to Rs 2,496 lakhs, through direct benefit transfer (DBT), or the public financial management system (PFMS).
The statement from the department comes in the wake of reports of delay in disbursing the students’ stipends.
“The state government has released state stipend for 16,374 students, amounting to Rs 2,496 lakhs, through DBT/PFMS today. By next 24 hours, amount will be start crediting to the students’ bank accounts,” said an official of the department.
The department further informed that, for the post-matric scholarship scheme, the state government has received the first installment of Rs 116 crores from the Centre. However, it said, the fund could not be released as the government of India recently changed the scheme code.
“The technical issues relating to the scheme is persistent at the GoI level and unless the GoI resolves it, the department will not be able to proceed for configuration of the same in PFMS platform,” it said.
“The Centre has categorically said that, unless the first installment is fully utilised, the second installment will not be released,” the department said.
It appealed to the student community to “have patience and wait for a few days as the department is working relentlessly to provide them the due assistance at the earliest.”
The department also informed that, “due to errors in linking Aadhaar or PAN cards, the stipends of 89 students out of 16,000 were reverted.”
The education department has drawn flak from the student community across the state for delaying the disbursement of stipends.
