Govt. blamed for making SC students pay full fee for engg. courses

HYDERABAD

Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader and former IPS officer R.S. Praveen Kumar has alleged that the Congress Government is doing grave injustice to Dalit (Scheduled Castes) students, who have secured seats in engineering courses, by making them pay full fee.

Mr. Praveen Kumar said on Friday that this was happening to Dalit students despite the presence of Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka in the government, G. Prasad Kumar as the Assembly Speaker and Mallikarjun Kharge as the AICC president.

So far, the tuition fee and maintenance fee of SC students was being reimbursed by the government, but from this year, they were being forced to pay the full fee as the new guidelines issued by the government state that the fee reimbursement amount would be credited to the bank accounts of students.

As a result, many SC students who had secured ranks in EAPCET and secured seats in colleges were being forced to pay full fee with the college managements denying admissions for non-payment of full fee. Earlier, the colleges used to give admissions without asking for any tuition fee from the SC students as they would get it later as fee reimbursement from the government.

He sought to know from the Congress Government whether it was planning to deny professional educational courses to SC students due to their inability to pay full fee on their own. He also asked why such guidelines were issued only for SC students, when other reserved categories were getting admissions in the process that had been in vogue all through.