About 9,753 minority students across the country benefited under the Padho Pardesh scheme, which was recently discontinued by the Ministry of Minority Affairs, during the period of eight years from 2014-15 to 2021-22, as stated in a report by The New Indian Express.
This scheme was introduced in 2006 for providing subsidy on the interest payable during the period of moratorium on the educational loan, obtained by the students belonging to the notified minority communities, for overseas studies.
According to the RTI response received by the Madurai-based activist S Karthik, there are the number of students who benefitted from the scheme:
- 706 students in 2014-15
- 1106 in 2015-16
- 537 in 2016-17
- 763 in 2017-18
- 1347 in 2018-19
- 1448 in 2019-20
- 1296 in 2020-21
- 2550 in 2021-22
The discontinuation of this scheme was condemned by different political party leaders across the country.
"The students from the non-BJP-ruled states benefited most with this scheme. About 5510 minority students, more than half of the total number of beneficiaries, were from Kerala. This is why the Union government has discontinued this scheme," alleged Karthik, adding that 437 minority students from Tamil Nadu availed benefits of this scheme during the particular eight-year period.
The Central Public Information Officer of the Ministry of Minority Affairs furnished the religion-wise information on the number of beneficiaries from 2014-15 to 2019-20 to Karthik. According to this, more Christian students utilised this scheme than students of any other religion:
Christian - 3002
Muslim -1494
Jain - 715
Sikh - 569
Buddhist - 109
Parsi - 24