The struggle that JRF/MANF and other fellowship students face is not new, delays in stipends and reimbursements are a regular affair. But now things seem to be getting even worse for students at Jawaharlal Nehru University
Almost 500 JNU students could be returned their Junior Research Fellowship/Maulana Azad National Fellowship forms further delaying their scholarship process. The student union said that they had enough reason to believe that the Controller of Examinations was planning to return the forms to the students because they hadn't mentioned the specific date on which they claimed their fellowships. So far, the students have only mentioned the month.
The students state that the administration is coming up with new procedures that made the fellowship authorisation procedure in JNU extremely cumbersome. They term this new demand for the mention of the date to be just another "nonsensical and frivolous" reason to make things difficult for them. "All the national fellowships are given on a monthly basis. For example, if a student was granted the fellowship on January 25, then they are paid for six days and from the next month on, they're given the entire month's stipend. So it makes no sense to force us to mention the date," said a student union member.
When the students heard that their forms might be returned, the Union members decided to write a letter to the administration and they are awaiting a response,"We are hoping that the administration doesn't return the forms, it would be so chaotic and unnecessarily delay things for us again," a student said.
Besides this, the students complained that there were several other procedures too that have been added over the last one year making it completely bureaucratic. This is happening despite the fact that the UGC and MHRD have stated time and again to make the entire process of fellowship disbursal smoother and more effective.
According to a statement released by the Union, earlier, the students after getting the forms authorised in respective schools, used to directly take the forms to the admissions office to get signatures which was processed within two-three days. Now, it is mandatory for only schools to forward respective forms to the office which itself takes days to reach. Then, the process to get counter authorisation or signature from Controller of Examination, Hanuman Sharma takes up a few more days, making the whole procedure long and stressful, students say.
Now in order to know the status of the forms, the students are forced to knock on the doors of the administration which is already short of manpower. The counter signature that the students have to get from the Controller of Examination is just an arbitrary mechanism adopted by the University, the students added.
However, perhaps the bigger violation here is the COE's demand that the students submit a declaration form for claiming House Rent Agreement including the electricity bill and other documents. "This is clear violation of the UGC's prescribed format for claiming HRA. There are high chances of further delay for scholarship disbursal in this case, as UGC may not at all recognize this new format instead of its’ prescribed format," a statement from the Union said.
