Single-window portal for all scholarships soon
Presently, students have to go to a particular government department website to register for the scheme under it, which is time-consuming.
Representative image
CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government is developing a comprehensive state scholarship portal, a single-window online platform for all scholarship schemes offered by various departments of the State.
Presently, students have to go to a particular government department website to register for the scheme under it, which is time-consuming. Several departments, including School Education, Higher Education and Backward Classes, Backward Classes and Minorities Welfare Department, provide various scholarships for school, college students.
Sources from State-run Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA), appointed as the nodal agency in developing the portal, said the new portal envisages an end-to-end solution for all scholarship schemes starting from online student registration, verifications and disposal of application online, sanction and disbursal of various scholarships to the students through direct benefit transfer.
“This portal aims to provide a simplified and transparent system for faster and effective disposal of the scholarship applications and delivery of funds directly into the beneficiaries’ account without any hassles,” a senior official from TNeGA told DT Next. “We are looking at platforms that can store big data, pre-process and process the data, fetch eligible students and deliver scholarships,” he added.
Stating that a selected software company is developing the portal, the official said: “The organisation will provide a common platform and portal for the higher education department, institutions, students, welfare departments like SC/ST/BC/MBC/minorities welfare, other scholarship offering departments for predictive disbursement of scholarships to eligible students of various schemes of both state and Centre”.
The official said other features include ensuring hassle-free filing of applications by populating data from existing databases, which include the school’s Education Management Information System (EMIS) to collect information about students, University Information Management System (UIMS) to validate student bonafide in post-matric scholarships, National Payments Corporation of India (NCPI) for bank account details of students, Electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC), and eSevai to confirm citizen details like community and family income etc.
Claiming that the portal will also ensure elimination of duplication of beneficiaries, the website will have a calculation engine option to help students and institutions calculate the scholarships under various schemes. “The portal will host the workflow of the application through the different departments,” he said adding the platform will host the data related to the application, its transactions, history and user data.
The official said, “It will also provide detailed analytics and visualisation through customisable dashboards for various stakeholders at different beneficiary levels”.