This year, to increase women’s participation in technical studies, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has more than doubled the number of scholarships.
This provision is for women students aiming to attend technical institutions at the undergraduate level.
The council offers a scholarship called Pragati to women students who come from economically weaker sections. The eligibility stands for people who earn less than 8 lakh per annum. To cover the tuition fees along with other expenses, a woman student gets Rs 50,000 per annum.
Reportedly, until now, the council was offering 4,000 scholarships to women. But after the decision to up the number, they will be offering 10,000 scholarships starting from the 2020-21 academic session.
Students studying polytechnic, engineering, pharmacy and architecture courses are eligible for the scholarship in the institutions as approved by the council.
Not just that, AICTE has also taken the step to provide funds to women students from Jammu & Kashmir and the northeast area, if they apply for monetary aid.
AICTE will manage the funds from its corpus.
While in conversation with ThePrint, Anil Sahasrabudhe commented that:
In recent years, we have received good response for our Pragati scholarship scheme and hence we decided to expand the number to 10,000 this year. We want more and more girl students to take advantage of the scholarship scheme.
This seems like a constructive step to help out women students who have the calibre but lack the resources.