Itanagar: Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Pema Khandu on Friday launched the on-boarding of scholarship schemes of the state government onto the National Scholarship Portal (NSP), which is the first in the country customised exclusively for the state of Arunachal.

The portal is a one-stop solution through which various services like student application, receipt, processing, sanction and disbursal of various scholarships/stipends of the state and central governments are e-enabled. It aims at providing a common electronic portal for implementing various scholarships schemes.

At present, three schemes of the state government are covered under the portal.

Khandu congratulated the IT department for the initiative, which will benefit thousands of Arunachalee students studying all over India by enabling the scholarship process. "It's another feather in the cap for the IT department to achieve excellence in digital governance," he said.

All the scholarship/-stipend schemes of the government have been on-boarded onto the portal and made accessible to all. A major benefit of the exercise was elimination of multiple scholarships by an individual, said the chief minister and requested all departments and government organisations to adopt IT for transparency, accountability and efficiency.

He lauded the achievements of the department in processing more than 45,000 applications and disbursing Rs 16.13 crore under the directorate of higher and technical education and Rs 26 crore under the social justice, empowerment and tribal affairs department through the portal.

Chief secretary Satya Gopal applauded the hard work put in by all the stakeholders to achieve the milestone on time. Special secretary IT Prince Dhawan explained the process, features and benefits of the portal.

Khandu also inaugurated the new cabinet hall in the state civil secretariat building in presence of deputy chief minister Chowna Mein and other cabinet ministers.