fee waiver to poor students among forward castes

The Chief Mini ster, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, has directed officials to work out modalities to provide fee waiver to poor students among forward castes.
Under this provision, students belonging to any caste or religion can study engineering, medicine, MCA, MBA and graduate courses without paying any fee, provided their family income is below Rs 1 lakh per annum.
This decision would extend free education to all economically backward families in the state, which would be the first initiative of its kind in the country. The government is hoping that nearly 20 lakh students belonging to forward castes would benefit from the waiver of fees in professional colleges.
There has been persistent demand from them for the fee waiver.
Earlier, the state government had announced fee reimbursement to students belonging to Kapu community but the scheme could not be extended to the entire community because of paucity of funds.
Several MLAs belonging to the Brahmin, Vysya, Kshatriya, Reddy, Kamma, Kapu and Velama communities had requested the Chief Minister Dr Y.S.
Rajasekhar Reddy, to extend the fee waiver to students coming from poor families in these communities.
“He responded positively and asked officials to work out the modalities for this,” said the Nalgonda MLA, Mr Komatireddy Venkata Reddy, who wanted the benefit to be extended to poor students in the Reddy community.
Earlier, the state government had allocated Rs 30 crore for the fee waiver, which some ministers complained was too meagre.
After getting several representations from forward castes leaders and legislators, the Chief Minister decided to announce the scheme on “saturation” model.
This means all the students within the income limit could get the entire feereimbursement from the government. “Dr Reddy will announce details of the scheme within 10 days,” an official at the Chief Minister’s office said.