The Prime Minister's Special Scholarship Scheme (PMSSS) in the ongoing academic year, records an increase of 39 percent from the previous year

More than 88 percent of students from Jammu Kashmir have got admission under the Prime Minister's Special Scholarship Scheme (PMSSS) in the ongoing academic year, recording an increase of 39 percent from the previous year.

This year, of the total intake capacity of 5,000, 4418 J&K students got admission under the PMSSS.

The figures were revealed by Secretary of Human Resource Development (HRD) R Subrahmanyam in a tweet.

According to Subrahmanyam, 4418 J&K students are enrolled under the PMSSS in the ongoing academic session.

As per Assistant Director and Public Information Officer (PIO) R K Gunju in a reply to Right to Information (RTI), 10,885 students of the total, 25,000 seats allotted were enrolled in past five years.
The scheme was started in the year 2011 with 5000 scholarship seats per academic session wherein students of Jammu Kashmir pursued undergraduate studies outside the State.

However, the target of 5000 seats for J&K students was never achieved since the inception of the scheme.

According to the RTI reply, only 39 percent of students from the State benefited under this scheme in academic session 2014-15 including 1948 students out of 5000.

Similarly, in the academic session 2015-16, just 27 percent of students were enrolled under the scheme, which is the lowest ever admissions of J&K students under the PMSSS.

In this session, only 1338 students secured admissions.

During the academic session 2016-17, of the 5000 seats, just 2161 (43.33 percent) students of the State availed the scholarship scheme.

Likewise, in 2017-18, only 59 percent (2954 students) from J&K enrolled under this scheme and in the academic year 2018-19, only 50 percent of students (2484) were enrolled under the PMSSS.

Under this scheme, the students are being given Rs 30000 as their academic fee for the general degree to 2070 JK students.

For the Engineering degree and professional students, upto Rs. 1.25 lakh is being provided as their academic fee.

The intake capacity to pursue these courses is 2830 seats for the J&K students.

Likewise, upto Rs 3 lakh is being given to 100 medical and BDS or equivalent medical streams students of J&K as their academic fee.

PMSSS also uniformly provides students of all courses Rs 1 lakh as maintenance charge limit.

(Courtesy: Rising Kashmir)