national means cum-merit scholarship scheme introduced

New Delhi, Feb 28 (UNI) The Government today announced to introduce a new National Means-cum-Merit Scholarship Scheme to arrest the drop out ratio and encourage students to continue their education beyond class-VIII.

Presenting the Union Budget for 2007-08 in the Lok Sabha, Finance Minister, P Chidambaram said under the new scheme, each student would be given Rs.6,000 per year for study in classes IX, X, XI and XII. Besides, one lakh scholarships would be awarded every year.

In order to fund this programme, a corpus fund of Rs.750 crore would be created this year and a like amount would be added to the fund every year over the next three years.

Accordingly, a sum of Rs.750 crore would be placed with the State Bank of India and the yield from the fund would be used for awarding the schorships, he added.

UNI