A huge breakthrough for the Uttar Pradesh government is to get premier institutes like IITs, IIMs, and other national-level institutes under its Department of Social Welfare so that scholarship to eligible students might be distributed efficiently. This has been a result of a case where a Dalit student, Atul Kumar, was almost deprived of his hard-won seat at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Dhanbad owing to some delay in the payment of fees.

Atul Kumar from Titora village in Muzaffarnagar, whose family is that of a daily wage labourer and he is 18 years old, has been allotted a seat in the Electrical Engineering branch of IIT Dhanbad. He was a minute short of paying admission fee on Monday, which risks an added loss for him. From the actions of the institute to the intervention of the Supreme Court on Monday that ordered the institute to admit Kumar, this case will now be curtailed by another move of the Uttar Pradesh government that revealed it will pay Kumar’s entire fee by advancing for the state scholarship.

The incident has evoked a wider initiative by the state government in order to ensure there is no such situation with other students in the future. Uttar Pradesh’s Social Welfare Minister Asim Arun declared that the government will write to all premier institutes of national importance outside the state, which includes IITs and IIMs, so as to get them to register with the Social Welfare Department. The effort aims at facilitating the uninterrupted disbursal of scholarships to eligible students of Uttar Pradesh securing admission to such institutes.

The first institute to be registered under the initiative would be IIT Dhanbad, Minister Arun emphasized. “I have spoken to the registrar of IIT Dhanbad and we intend to get it registered with the Department of Social Welfare by Thursday so that the scheme can be implemented for Atul and all the eligible students from this state in the coming days,” he said.

Several top institutes outside Uttar Pradesh are not enlisted with the state’s scholarship disbursal system, which in turn is causing a delay and problems for the students. “We are creating a direct channel for disbursing scholarships by including these institutions, thus ensuring that no student faces financial hurdles in pursuing higher education,” Arun added.

Besides, the state government is contemplating introducing a “free-ship card” for Kumar, which the state government launched this year. The “free-ship card” will enable eligible students to seek admission in institutions with a zero-balance facility, without requiring initial fees. Kumar will be one of the first recipients of this facility.

Earlier, Minister Arun had personally met Kumar’s family and assured them that the state government was committed to supporting his education. The government would take all the financial responsibilities on itself, he said, adding that this would remove all future financial barriers for Kumar.

This proactive move by the UP government reflects its interest in fostering socioeconomically disadvantaged students so they may afford financially competent higher education at the foreign prestigious institutions. Registration of institutes like IIT Dhanbad shall pave their way to further scholarship disbursal more smoothly and more efficiently, which indeed, has benefited numerous students across the state.