Bhubaneswar, Aug. 31: The BJD today took exception to the Union government's decision to route scholarship amounts of scheduled castes (SC) and scheduled tribes (ST) students through the national scholarship portal. Earlier, the money used to be disbursed by the state governments.

State tribal welfare minister Sudam Marandi alleged that the move would affect thousands of ST/SC students and deprive them from applying for scholarships. He pointed out that the Union government had made it mandatory to link the scholarships with Aadhaar cards.

He said linking Aadhaar cards would create problems, as many students do not have them in the first place. This would result in students being stopped from applying for the centrally-assisted post-matric scholarships. The directive clearly violates the Supreme Court directive, which said the use of Aadhaar could not be made mandatory while rolling out social security schemes, he added.

Marandi also said the Union government should allow students to avail the scholarship amount through the Prerana portal, designed by the Odisha government for the purpose.

The state government demanded offline collection of scholarship applications considering the inadequate IT infrastructure and unreliable Internet connectivity in far-flung areas of the state. Marandi also rued that the Centre had declined the request to extend the last date of receiving applications till October end, despite several requests. <>For students whose scholarship claims are Rs 50,000 and below (Odisha has 98 per cent of such beneficiaries), the authenticity of the documents submitted by the students should be handed over to the educational institutions concerned. Given the shortage of staff members at the tribal welfare department, the physical verification of the certificates would not be feasible, stated a notification from the government.

Of the Rs 1,054 crore spent by the state government for the scholarship amount in 2015-16, the Centre should reimburse Rs 555.03 crore, Marandi said. "But the Centre is yet to reimburse the entire amount," he added.