Direct transfer of benefit initiated for about 6L applicants

KOLKATA: The state government initiated direct transfer of benefit of Aikyashree scheme to six lakh applicants, whose applications were received through Duare Sarkar camps.

Under the Aikyashree scheme, the state government provides scholarships to students from minority communities. It ensures pre-metric scholarship to meritorious students from Class I and X, post-metric scholarship for meritorious students from Class IX to PhD and merit-cum-means scholarships for pursuing technical and professional courses.

The pre-metric scholarship was launched to encourage the minority community to attend schools and prevent drop-outs. Sources said the state government had received around 12 lakh applications through Duare Sarkar camps and so far around 6.14 lakh camps had been scrutinised.

The highest number of beneficiaries would be from South 24-Parganas district with around 1.20 lakh applicants to receive the scholarship.

According to an officer, the benefits would be directly transferred in the bank account of the beneficiaries.

The process of sending the benefits has started and it will be completed in phases.

It needs to be mentioned that the Duare Sarkar programme was the biggest outreach drive that was taken up by the Bengal government to help people get benefits of more than 18 state-run schemes at their doorsteps. The second edition of Duare Sarkar was organised from August 16 to September 15 and around 91,895 camps were held across the state in one month. More than 3.57 crore people visited the Duare Sarkar camps in the past one month.