The University Grants Commission (UGC) would finally disburse the Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF) to M.Phil and PhD scholars that has been pending for nine long months.
The UGC has directed the Ministry of Minority Affairs (MoMA) to disburse the fellowships After intervention by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) last week.
Haroon Rashid, research scholar and awardee of the MANF fellowship told The Cognate, “In a notification received on a mail as a response to my repeated complaints made to MoMA, I’ve been informed that our fellowship got updated today”.
The joint secretary of MoMA, Aditya S Singh has assured him through the mail that the sanction for the release of funds to UGC has been processed in MoMA.
The mail shared by Rashid also stated, “However, there have been some issues in the payment which are being resolved in consultation with all concerned stakeholders. This will take some time. Please wait for further updation in this matter”.
He also informed, “The fellowship of the session 2020-21 has been transferred in our bank accounts and will be updated by tomorrow. However, the amount of the session 2021-22 that is from April to September is yet to transfer”.
On July 28, The Cognate reported that hundreds of research scholars were facing dire straits and their research was affected due to the delay in the fellowship.
Rashid who is appointed as a spokesperson for all the MANF fellows from the ministry also made clear that the scholarship got delayed due to the personal tussle between the UGC and the ministries.
After the Finance Ministry amended the criteria for the transfer of funding for Central sector programmes in March, the UGC instructed the Ministries to distribute the fellowships for M.Phil. and PhD scholars on their own. The new regulations stipulate that a Central Nodal Agency must be chosen before the relevant Ministry can transfer monies directly into the accounts of the recipients. Prior to then, the UGC would receive the monies from the Ministries and distribute them.
In the meeting held on August 12 at PMO, it was decided that fellowships will be granted as per earlier rules and then it will be up to the Ministries to come up with their mechanisms to disburse the fellowship from time to time to the students.
The Ministry’s own mechanism to deal with the disbursal of the fellowships would start from September 2022 respectively.
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Ghazala Ahmad is the Delhi Correspondent for The Cognate.
