Ensuring Benefits of Schemes to The Minorities

The Government has said that it is being ensured that the five national minorities are benefited through the welfare programmes of the Government . Stating this in written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today, Shri Salman Khurshid, Minister of Minority Affairs, said that the Ministry of Minority Affairs is implementing the following Schemes exclusively for the five notified minority communities:

(i) Pre-matric Scholarship Scheme.
(ii) Post-matric Scholarship Scheme.
(iii) Merit-cum-means based Scholarship Scheme.
(iv) Free Coaching & Allied Scheme.
(v) Equity contribution to National Minorities Development and Finance Corporation for enhancing credit to the minorities.
(vi) Grant-in-aid to Maulana Azad Education Foundation for minority welfare activities.
(vii) Computerization of records of State Wakf Boards.
(viii) Multi-sectoral Development Programme.

Shri Khurshid also said that the following steps are being taken to streamline the system and to ensure better delivery of benefits for the welfare of minorities:

i) Educational Empowerment, Area Development, Economic Empowerment and Strengthening of Minority Institutions have been adopted as the four pronged strategy for the development of minority communities in the country, during the 12th Five Year Plan.

ii) In order to make the Schemes / Programmes for minority welfare more effective and focused, a Working Group was constituted on ‘Empowerment of Minorities’ for formulation of 12th Five Year Plan which has made various recommendations. These include making the Scholarship Schemes Demand Driven, ‘ blocks’ to be the unit of planning for area development, to expand the basket of schemes included in the PM’s New 15 Point Programme, to introduce social audit for all minority welfare schemes, etc.

iii) In order to streamline the scholarship schemes, the Ministry of Minority Affairs has introduced the Online Scholarship Management System (OSMS) for Merit-cum-means based Scholarship Scheme in 2011-12 and for Post-matric Scholarship Scheme in 2012-13.

iv) Quarterly review is conducted by the Ministry of Minority Affairs with the Nodal Officers of concerned Ministries/Departments. Ministry of Minority Affairs also reviews the progress under this Programme with States/UTs. Further, the progress is reviewed by the Committee of Secretaries (CoS) on half yearly basis and then reported to the Cabinet.

v) Meetings and conferences of Principal Secretaries / Secretaries of State /UT Governments are held to review the implementation of Schemes of the Ministry.

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