Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edapaddi Palaniswami highlighting that the Post Matric scholarship scheme should be considered "in line" with other Centrally sponsored schemes, and funded with a sharing pattern of 60:40 between the Centre and the States, he said he had already addressed this issue in his earlier letters in 2018 and 2019 to the PM.
Palaniswami writes, "I would like to bring to your kind attention an urgent and vital issue concerning Tamil Nadu; namely, the concept of application of committed liability in releasing funds under the Post Matric scholarship scheme to the State." Previously, the expenditure under the scheme at the end of each five-year plan period was taken as the committed liability of the state for the next five-year plan period. Although the practice of 5-year planning was given up after the end of the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-2017), the earlier practice of re-fixing the state's Committed Liability at the end of five years has been continued.
For the financial year (2020-21), for a total expected expenditure of Rs 2,110.90 crore, Tamil Nadu will be eligible to receive only Rs 584.44 as Central share. "This has placed an extremely high burden on the state government's finances. It also results in a situation, where what is really a Central sector scheme will be largely funded by the states from their own resources," the chief minister pens in his letter.
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