New Delhi, August 06: The government has sanctioned 24,521 National Means-cum-Merit scholarships in 2009-10, down from 54,564 in the previous fiscal, the Rajya Sabha was informed today.
Replying to supplementaries during Question Hour, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said states are not sending adequate number of eligible students for the monthly scholarship of Rs 500.
The National Means-cum-Merit Scholarship scheme initially envisaged creation of a corpus of Rs 3,000 core over a four- year period. The interest earned from the corpus was to be utilised for payment of scholarships every year in the secondary and higher secondary stage, he said.
But there was a drastic fall in interest rate – from 9 per cent to 5 per cent – after the first tranche of corpus was created, he said.
–PTI