Farmers’ children in the state struggle to get scholarships under the Raitha Vidya Nidhi Scheme due to unseeded bank accounts or their ID validation failure.
Bengaluru: The Karnataka government received more than five lakh applications for scholarships under the Raitha Vidya Nidhi Scholarship Scheme. However, many of these students did not have their accounts seeded to their Aadhar due to which they could not be granted the scholarship.
Kusum, a B.A. 1st year student belonging to a farmer’s family, said, “I applied for the scholarship but they told me that my account was not seeded with my Aadhar. I told them it has been linked but they said linking is not enough. I didn’t understand what to do. I have still not received the amount.”
The scheme is categorized as Pre-metric and Post-metric scholarships. While the pre-metric scholarship is provided just to girls from class 8th-10th, the post-metric scholarship is provided to both boys and girls. However, it is necessary for the applicants to have their own bank accounts that are seeded to their Aadhar numbers.
Manoj M. Koushik, Project Manager e-Attestation, State Scholarship Portal, said, “Aadhar is the financial address. We use Aadhar number itself to make any payments. If I open an account, I’ll give my Aadhar and do e-KYC. That is linking. I will have to add my branch to seed my account. Here, seeding of Aadhar card is necessary, not linking.”
He added, “For two reasons applicants do not get amount. One, their Aadhar number is not linked or seeded with the account. The other is their data as in stats might be different when compared to Aadhar. There will be a name mismatch. Combined together, maybe 30-35000 students cannot be paid.”
According to the scheme, girls from class 8-10th will receive 2000/- and students studying in college will get an amount ranging from 3000/- to 11,000/- depending upon the course or degree they are pursuing.
Moreover, for the post metric scholarships, the government opens bank accounts for the students. They are supposed to verify the data from a separate database ‘Kutumb’ that stores the details of a family. In present, over 6 lakh students have been sanctioned a total amount of Rs. 197 crores.
Manjula, Deputy Director of Department of Agriculture said, “As on today (23rd Feb), we received a total of six lakh six thousand and eighteen applications. A total of 197 crores have been transferred.”
Even after the officials explain the procedure to students, they struggle to seed their bank accounts with their Aadhar.
