AMC takes nearly one year to felicitate meritorious students

AURANGABAD: Nearly a year since the results came out, the cash-strapped civic body on Tuesday felicitated 190 students of 12 municipal schools, who scored 60% and above in the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) exam held in March 2016.Results came out in June 2016 and civic authorities have been planning to organise the felicitation function since but were unable to do so.Ravindra Nikam, deputy municipal commissioner, at the felicitation ceremony, attributed the delay to various reasons. “There is an administrative procedure which we have to follow, after which we have to take permissions and approvals from various office-bearers. Nevertheless, we are now not only felicitating all meritorious students, but also giving them a cash prize before the start of a new academic session,” he said.The civic body offers a cash prize to civic school students coming from humble backgrounds — with an objective of providing them with financial support to avail higher education. But, students felicitated on Tuesday have already cleared one academic session in between. A civic official attributed financial constraint as the main reason for the delay. “The civic body has to give cash prizes to all the 190 students, for which authorities have to make a provision of Rs 15 lakh. But, considering the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation’s (AMC) financial condition in the past one year, it was not feasible,” the official said.Parents of one of the students who scored above 60% work as labourers. They said the timely release of funds would have helped many students. “We were planning on taking private tuitions for our son so that he could do well in classes XI and XII. We waited for the cash prize for a couple of months, we couldn’t get it and finally we dropped the idea,” the y said. One of the students also said that felicitation immediately after the declaration of results would have made a difference.The civic body offers cash prize of Rs 50,000 each to two students, who scored above 90% marks, Rs 25,000 each to 12 students scoring anywhere 80-89%, Rs 15,000 each to 26 students securing 75-79% and Rs 5,000 each to 150 students who scored between 60% and 74%.