 "Web-based portal for education loans launched")
A web-based portal, Vidya Lakshmi (www.vidyalakshmi.co.in) has been launched for the benefit of students seeking educational loans. The portal has been developed and maintained by NSDL e-Governance Infrastructure Limited (NSDL e-Gov) under the guidance of Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development and Indian Banks' Association (IBA).
Earlier the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the Union Budget for 2015-16 inter-alia had proposed to set-up a fully IT-based Student Financial Aid Authority to administer and monitor scholarship as well as educational loan schemes, through the Pradhan Mantri Vidya Lakshmi Karyakram (PMVLK) to ensure that no student misses out on higher education for lack of funds. The launch of the aforesaid portal is a first step towards achieving this objective,
The Vidya Lakshmi Portal is a first of its kind portal providing single window for students to access information and make application for educational loans provided by banks as also government scholarships.
The portal gives information about educational loan schemes of banks and has a common educational loan application form for students. It also gives the facility to apply to multiple banks for educational loans and facility for banks to download students' loan applications among others.
For easier access, there is also facility for banks to upload loan processing status and dashboard facility for students to view status of their loan application and linkage to National Scholarship Portal for information and application for government scholarships.
So far, 13 banks have registered 22 educational loan schemes on the Vidya Lakshmi Portal and five banks viz; SBI, IDBI Bank, Bank of India, Canara Bank & Union Bank of India have integrated their system with the portal for providing loan processing status to students. This initiative aims to bring on board all banks providing educational loans.