A large segment of Odisha's potential workforce is unemployable, with 76.04% literacy rate and an increasing number of dropouts failing to enroll or complete any form of higher education. According to a report of MHRD, one of the major reasons students drop out of school or colleges is poverty or economic issues. Apart from financial constraint, lack of awareness about educational scholarships, its accessibility and its application process are also some of the major factors for increase in dropout numbers in the state.
Odisha State Scholarship Portal envisioned to bridge the gap between the scholarship providers and scholarship seekers, thus encouraging more students to be in the system. Six major department of the state have on boarded onto this common platform for duplication and leakage free scholarship disbursal. The portal validates the applications of the students online based on Aadhar Authentication. This is a one stop database for scholarships and provides a transparent dashboard for institution and department to check the status of the application. Through this portal the scholarship monies can directly be disbursed to the bank accounts of the selected students.
Keeping in view the State Government’s commitment to make beneficiary-oriented schemes easily accessible, seamless and transparent, a unified State Scholarship Portal has been developed by bringing in 21 scholarship schemes of 6 major department of the government under a single platform. The Odisha State Scholarship Portal is an integrated e-Governance Portal for automation, streamlining & effective management of scholarship schemes being implemented in the state of Odisha across various departments. Odisha State Scholarship Portal envisioned to bridge the gap between the scholarship providers and scholarship seekers thus, encouraging more students to be in the system. Six major department of the state i.e. ST & SC Development, Higher Education, School & Mass Education, Labour & ESI, Skill Development & Technical Education and Agriculture have on boarded their scholarship schemes onto this common platform to provide one stop solution to eligible students to make an informed choice from amongst various scholarship schemes and avail the benefit in a seamless and transparent manner. The features like Aadhaar based registration, integration with other on-line platforms/ data-bases relevant to scholarship programme like SAMS, e-District Portal, BSE database has been inbuilt in the architecture to minimize duplication and ensure leakage free scholarship disbursal. The State Scholarship Portal has been linked with the State Treasury Portal IFMS for automated payment directly in bank-accounts of beneficiaries.