Be flexible in granting scholarships, court tells government

New Delhi, Dec 1 (IANS) Coming to the aid of a girl student whose application for the Prime Minister's Merit Scholarship Scheme was rejected, the Delhi High Court Tuesday asked the government to be a little flexible about the rules.

The court was hearing the petition of B.C.Pathak, father of Garima, who had secured 87.2 percent marks in class XII and secured admission to the MBBS course in a medical college at Patna.        
Garima applied for a scholarship under the Prime Minister's Merit Scholarship Scheme for benefit of wards of defence personnel in October 2007 but her application was rejected as she had not submitted some necessary documents.        
Giving relief to Garima, Justice Sanjiv Khanna said: "Respondents (the government) were required to be careful while scrutinising each application and not reject them even when sufficient material and evidence in support was filed. In fact, the scheme, being beneficial, has to be interpreted in a reasonable manner, so that benefits are not denied to genuine and deserving cases."        
The court observed that Garima had taken additional precaution to obtain original certificate from the air force record office that her father was an ex-serviceman and had also filed a photocopy of the certificate and discharge issued by the air force.         
"General instructions did not specifically and in clear terms stipulate the need to file I-card issued by Zila Sainik Board and that the discharge book or any other document or certificate will not suffice," the court ruled.        
The court said that in these circumstances, it did not see why Garima should be denied benefit of the scholarship, especially when she had secured 87.2 percent marks in Class XII and had secured admission to the first year of MBBS Course as wards of ex-servicemen who had secured 60 percent marks in class XII have been given the scholarship.        
The court asked the government to pay Garima the scholarship amount for the first year within six weeks, and told her to apply for scholarship for the second and third year along with relevant papers.