CM Calls For All-Party Meet On Fee Reimbursement; To Pay For Only Telangana Students

CM KCR kept his word that he would take along all parties in important decisions and  called an all-party meeting today to discuss and review students fee reimbursement programme. The meeting would be attended by  representatives of all parties along with ministers today at 6 PM. KCR already held 2 review meetings with officials of education and finance department in this regard and has arrived at some proposals which he is expected to keep before all the parties in the meeting and elicit their opinions on the same.

Approach to fee reimbursement in view of bifurcation, the annual income limits to be placed to qualify for reimbursement, qualification of students for reimbursement are some of the issues to be discussed at the meet. Presently, the income limit is 2 lakh for SCs and STs and 1 lakh for BC, Minorities, Physically handicapped. Rankers below 100 got full reimbursement while others got 35,000 per annum. These guidelines will be reviewed today before applying them from this academic year. CM KCR seem to have arrived at the conclusion that between 2011 and 2014, almost Rs. 6000 Cr were spent on reimbursements as per records. The estimate for this year has been put at Rs. 2500 Cr.

In view of bifurcation, KCR seem to have arrived at a decision to implement the fee reimbursement only to students from Telangana. Reimbursement of non-local students should be handled by AP Govt. as per his plan.

According to information, around 39,000 Andhra Pradesh students are studying in Telangana and around 18,000 Telangana students are studying in Andhra Pradesh. Telangana government will reimburse their fee. Most of the AP students studying in Telangana are pursuing professional courses, while Telangana students are studying Intermediate and degree courses in AP.Meanwhile, the new State governments in both AP and Telangana have to clear the fee reimbursement dues of the last quarter of 2013-14 academic year.The Telangana government has to clear 1,360 crore and the AP government 1,376 crore.