Prime Minister Imran Khan has launched the “Rehmatul-Lil Alameen scholarship program” to help students who can’t otherwise afford the expensive education, pay for their undergraduate and intermediate studies.
Speaking at the launch event, the Prime Minister said that the federal government will allot Rs5.5 billion towards scholarships. This would amount to 70 thousand scholarships per annum, that will be granted to the deserving students.
"سکالرشپ پروگرام کیلئے آئندہ 5 سال کیلئے 27.93 ارب روپے کی منظور ی دی گئی ہے،"
وزیراعظم عمران خان کا #رحمت_اللعالمین_سکالرشپ پروگرام کے آغاز کی تقریب سے خطاب pic.twitter.com/6xqxEONaNs
— Prime Minister's Office (@PakPMO) April 15, 2021
This will happen for five years, and the federal government has approved a budget of 27.93 billion rupees that would be going towards .35 million scholarships over the period.
PM Khan then added that the provincial governments of Punjab and KPK would also allot Rs1 billion each for almost 15000 scholarships in their respective provinces.
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He said that Punjab has planned to increase the number of scholarships awarded each year to 75 thousand over the coming years, and similarly, KPK has also planned to increase the size of their number of scholarships to 72 thousand in the coming years.
PM Khan said, “Never in Pakistan before, have scholarships been awarded on such a huge level”.
Details of the scholarships in Punjab
According to eduvision website, the Punjab government will be awarding these websites to 14891 students, with 14000 scholarships reserved for intermediate students while 891 for undergraduate students.
The website mentions that for intermediate students, PKR 25,000 per student will be awarded, and it mentions the criteria too.
It is worth mentioning that it will be awarded to public school students.
The students must have obtained at least 60 percent marks in the SSC examination from any Public Sector School and secured admission in a government college within two years of passing the SSC Examinations. The student must not be availing any other scholarship and 60 percent of scholarships will be provided to Science students and the rest to the Humanities students, with gender parity.
For need-based applicants of scholarship, a certain criterion must be met, like the income of parents must be less than or equal to Rs25,000 per month. Additionally, Parents must not own more than 05 acres of agricultural land or 5 Marla urban property.
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It must be noted that out of 50% of need-based scholarships, a 10% quota will be reserved for children of government employees (Grade 1 – 4)
For merit-based scholarship, the Candidate must be the highest scorer from their respective district as selected by the Higher Education Department in light of the results issued by the Intermediate and Secondary Education boards.
Moreover, the score of the applicant is verified from the data provided by the boards in Punjab through the HEP.
Lastly, the students who get admission in a public sector institute out of their own district, their merit will be determined based on the district of domicile.
It must be noted that the merit of the candidacy is to be decided on the basis of their district/place of residence, not the place or district where they are admitted.
In order to apply, one can visit the website of the higher education department of the Government of Punjab or click on this link:
https://hedscholarships.punjab.gov.pk/sign-up
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