Is the online procedure of administering fee-reimbursement a way of edging out some beneficiaries? This is the question troubling the minds of thousands of students who have registered themselves for engineering courses anticipating release of funds by the State Government.

Thousands of students aired their misgivings in no certain terms just a day after the Chief Minister K Rosaish announced the online fee reimbursement scheme.

A student union leader, Narsireddy said that he cannot understand why the Government has taken this decision to implement the scheme entirely in the online mode. Earlier, students needed to apply by filling online forms and the fee was deposited manually in their respective accounts. Now they don’t know what exactly is happening and he added that the move would prove a disaster, especially in the wake of the failure of web-based counselling in Eamcet-09.

The government announced that the money would be deposited by November end for last year’s beneficiaries but students were not convinced and had huge doubts.

When the college managements were contacted, they too said that there was no clarity on the part of the government, despite the chief minister’s reassurance that the scheme would be implemented effectively.

The managing director of a group of professional institutes said that as far as he knew, the procedure has not started. And it is not clear whether the delay is due to lack of funds or to technical glitches.

Meanwhile, the website developers of the fee-waiver scheme www.sbms.ap.gov.in, which is outsourced to a private informatics company, have disclosed that the servers which they were currently using were not able to handle the magnitude of data. A team member, who maintained that there were no software glitches, said that with an additional sanction of Rs 2.5 crore they will procure more servers. Once the hardware is thus updated there will be no more problems.

Apart from the technical aspects, there is a social element that has piqued some students — the possibility of the inclusion of economically-backward classes. All-India Student Federation leader Srujan Kumar said that it is very easy to procure an income certificate and anyone can apply for this fellowship. At a time when the government is reportedly facing financial crunch, this move would prove to an additional burden and some beneficiaries might be excluded he added. He also demanded a more transparent procedure for the scheme.

Meanwhile, the protest staged by AISF members at Samkshem Bhavan at Masab Tank today took a violent turn with police using force to disperse the students. Several student leaders were beaten up and arrested.

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