Government on Friday increased the outlay for the Ministry of Minority Affairs by around 50 per cent to give a boost to the welfare schemes for minority communities in the country.
While the allocation in the last Budget for the ministry was Rs 1,740 crore, it has now gone up to Rs 2,600 crore signalling the importance which the government attached to minority welfare.
The allocation has increased significantly for the multi-sectoral development programme for the minorities in selected minority-concentrated districts. In the last budget, it was Rs 889.50 crore while a sum of Rs 1,204.20 crore has been allocated for the next financial year.
The allocation for pre-matric scholarships for minorities has been more than doubled with government earmarking Rs 400 crore under this head in comparison to Rs 176.99 crore allocated in the last budget. Similarly, the allocations for post-matric scholarships and merit-cum-means scholarships have also been increased considerably.
Doubling the allocation for pre-matric scholarships was one of the key demands of the Ministry in view of large number of applicants and paucity of funds.
For the post-matric scholarship scheme, the government has allocated Rs 234.50 crore while in the last budget it was Rs 132.79 crore.
For the merit-cum-means scholarship programme, which counts both the merit of the student as well as his financial condition, the allocation this time is Rs 119.82 crore in comparison to the allocation of Rs 88.75 crore last year.
In another significant move, the government has almost doubled the allocation for the scheme for Leadership Development of Minority Women from Rs 7.1 crore to 13.3 crore.
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The ministry had launched the scheme aiming at social and financial empowerment of minority women only a few months back and had invited expressions of interest from NGOs for it.
With government moving towards taking a number of new steps for monitoring and streamlining the works related to minority welfare, the budget also makes an allocation of Rs 21.50 crore for research or studies, monitoring and evaluation of development schemes for minorities as well as their publicity.
In last Budget, the allocation in this head was Rs 12.7 crore.
The grants-in-aid to state channelising agencies (SCA) engaged for implementation of National Minority Development and Finance Corporation has been doubled from Rs 1.8 crore to Rs 3.6 crore.