Lucknow: Chief minister Yogi Adityanath accused the previous Samajwadi Party govt of having pocketed funds meant for scholarships and alleged that the ‘Samajwadi syndicate’ neither encouraged the youth nor provided scholarships on time.Issuing scholarships worth Rs 148 crore to 4.6 lakh pre- and post-matric students during a programme on Saturday, CM said: “Scholarships for students belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes were not issued in 2016-17. The then govt pocketed this money. When our govt was formed in 2017, we gave scholarships for 2016-17 and 2017-18 together. The earlier govt provided only Rs 2,900 crore in scholarships. Today, our govt is giving Rs 6,200 crore in scholarships, more than double the earlier amount.”CM said that there was no substitute for hard work and gave the example of ministers present in the programme. He described the struggles of cabinet minister Om Prakash Rajbhar, and related how minister of state Sanjeev Gond used to wander through forests and then realised that he should not run after a job but raise the voice of tribal communities.“Asim Arun served as ADG and police commissioner of Kanpur as an IPS officer while Danish Azad Ansari and Narendra Kashyap were engaged in social work. Chairperson of the SC/ST Commission, Baijnath Rawat, is a former MLA,” he said.CM added that there was no paucity of funds for scholarships and said that students who had been left out should apply at the earliest. He also encouraged the children to spend funds on education, and not on food and other things, asking them to read autobiographies of great personalities, informative and religious books.Highlighting how his govt was different from the previous one, CM said that earlier only 60-70 children out of 100 benefited from scholarships as their money was siphoned off. “Now, the funds are sent directly into a student’s bank account, an advantage of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s zero balance bank account push,” he said.Yogi added that in 2025-26, scholarships of Rs 2,750 crore were provided to 26.26 lakh students from SC/ST communities, Rs 360 crore to 5.89 lakh children from minority communities, and Rs 3,072 crore to 37 lakh students from Backward Classes. Govt also provided scholarships to 9.4 lakh children from low-income groups.“Earlier, youth used to go to other states to prepare for JEE and NEET. Now, youth are benefiting from the Mukhyamantri Abhyudaya Coaching. Next month, we will give scooties to 50,000 meritorious girls. Before 2017, the ‘Saifai syndicate’ had no time for anything except looting and plundering. These people thought only of their own families. But now, UP has moved on the path of prosperity,” he said.CM directed the departments of social welfare, backward classes welfare and minority welfare to ensure that funds reach every child’s account on time and that no eligible child should be left out.“Your generation is fortunate to be studying in UP at a time when there is no crisis of identity. Before 2017, schools had no teachers, and buildings were dilapidated. The dropout rate in basic education, from Classes I to VIII, was 19-20%. Govt had no interest in addressing this. We conducted a study and found that most girls were leaving school because there were no toilets, drinking water, or other such facilities. We improved this through Operation Kayakalp,” CM said.
