The Savitribai Phule Pune University has taken its final decision to offer the JRD Tata Scholarship to 100 meritorious students, which restricted to provide stipends to the students. According to the university, few meritorious research scholars enrolled in 2018 batch will be provided with the stipend. Students were observed to have agitated against the movement and demanded their pending stipends from last year.
The University announced that it has not received funds from University Grants Commission for providing stipends to the scholars from the past two years. The funds received earlier were already consumed for providing stipends to the scholars pursuing Ph.D. and MPhil degrees.
Hence, to resolve the matter, the university introduced to offer scholarships to a few meritorious students.
It has been finally announced, that Ph.D. students will be given a stipend of Rs 8000 per month for three years. Along with that, M.Phil students will be given a stipend of Rs 5000 per month. It was also announced, that stipends can be hiked depending on the performance.
The new scheme instructed the students to prepare a project progress report, which will be analyzed for six months. “However, the student’s research progress will be evaluated after every year. If it is found satisfactory, only then will there be an enhancement in the monthly stipend,” said a university official.
The students who will be offered the JRD Tata Scholarship are allowed to only pursue the same doctoral course if found the student is pursuing any other course, the student will be termed as ineligible for the scholarship.
The students who were offered a job, the stipend for the same course will be stopped, as announced by the university. “Along with research progress, students are expected to maintain a monthly 75 percent attendance during the course,” said officials.
“At the time of admission, we were assured of stipends for a period of three years. But now, we are informed that it will be reviewed after every year,” said one of the students who protested.