Maulana Azad Education Foundation, Ministry of Minority Affairs, Govt of India, is distributing Begum Hazrat Mahal National Scholarship for meritorious girl students who belong to minority communities of Muslims, christians, sikhs, buddhists, parsis, and Jain. The scholarship amount is to the tune of Rs 5,000 each for class 9 and class 10 students, and Rs 6,000 for class 10 and class 12 students. Deadline for submitting the registration online at maef.nic.in is September 30.
Girl students belonging to the aforementioned communities, studying in class 9 to class 12, and have secured at least 50% in previous class can apply. It is also required that the annual income of applicant’s parent or guardian from all sources should be less than 2 lakh rupees.
To read detailed guidelines of the scholarship scheme and apply, students need to visit the official website of the foundation that is maef.nic.in. Then go to the MAEF schemes section, and click on the online registration for Begum Hazrat Mahal National Scholarship Scheme link. This leads to bhmnsmaef.org.
The Maulana Azad National Scholarship scheme has till date supported 5,89,838 girl students. Scholarship amount provided in assistant amounts to Rs 504.16 crores.
Students need to submit income certificate of parents / guardians. MAEF underlines that the same should be issued by competent authority of state government or UT’s administration. Income certificates by pardhan or sarpanch, municipal board, councillors, MLA, MP of any gazetted officer can also be considered.
Moreover, a school verification form has to be uploaded. Available at maef.nic.in, student needs to download it and get it signed by the head of principal with his or her stamp and signature.
Whereas last year students had to send the hard copy of the form. This time the foundation has made the complete MAEF scholarship 2019-20 application form filling and submission process online.
Disbursement of scholarship will be only for eligible students, and selection for the same will be on the basis of percentage of marks obtained in qualifying exam. Each state and community has a fixed quota on the basis of minority population recorded in 2011 census. All conditions standing valid, a student will still not get their scholarship for studies abroad, or if there is another student from the same family in the same class.
Students can contact help desk for technical issues concerning the scholarship application form, active at 011-23583788/89. Re-login, and application status can be checked from the same official website where application form is being accepted.
The last census in India showed that the number of students in the nation is a staggering 315 million. Reports of the previous year suggest that around 84 million students are out of school. It has been prominently observed that girls make up for the larger part of dropouts, due to a number of reasons. Girls are often unable to complete their education due to reasons ranging from conventional social construct pushing them to stay home and help with household chores, to early marriage.
In such a scenario, scholarships such as MAEF play a vital role. When financial constraints are taken out of the equation, education of the girl child gets a boost. And it is rightly said, “You teach a man, you teach a man. You teach a woman, you teach a generation.”
There are several scholarships in India. Students are encouraged to seek them out and apply for them. Some are means based, some merit based, and some talent based. In this regard, AglaSem has launched ATSE 2020, the national level talent search cum scholarship exam for class 11 and class 12 students. Registration for ATSE 2020 are open, for engineering, medical, and law aspirants. It is India’s first center less exam. Students can register at atse.aglasem.com/2020.
