The RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has asked Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to increase the funding to preserve ancient manuscripts and research on ancient Indian knowledge systems. The student group has put forward this demand in a memorandum that it had submitted to the minister on Friday. The budget will be presented on February 1.

While the new National Education Policy talks about spending 10 per cent of the GDP on education, ABVP asks Sitharaman to spend at least 6 per cent of the GDP on education. It also asks to allocate 2 per cent of the GDP towards the National Research Foundation. "Augmenting the education budget to the tune of 6 per cent of India’s GDP, ensuring that budget allocation for the education sector is in accordance with the NEP guidelines, establishing the NEP-mandated National Research Foundation to oversee the proper and equitable allocation of R&D budget, skilling and upskilling of the workforce, GST rebates in respect of education-enabling and education-facilitating articles, formulation of National Employment Policy, encouragement of transformative changes in agriculture constituted some of the major demands and suggestions enumerated in the memorandum," reads a statement.

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Since the beginning of the lockdown, researchers across the country have been complaining about a delay in the disbursal of their scholarships and fellowships. The ABVP too, like the other student organisations has now demanded the disbursal of these funds. They've also asked to increase the pre-matric scholarship amount and increase the number of recipients of the PM fellowship and asked for the creation of a single portal for all fellowships and scholarships.