HYDERABAD : The scheme was a huge success since it helped students from weaker sections to pursue intermediate in some of the top corporate colleges

In a major jolt to meritorious students from BC, SC, ST and minority categories, the state government has decided to limit the free corporate education scheme to 5,500 students from 8,000.

The government issued orders to this effect on Monday and also exempted Hyderabad district from the scheme as it is an “urban district“.

While majority of the students who availed the scheme were from BC categories, only 20 per cent of the seats have been reserved for these categories in the latest orders.

Under the scheme introduced by late Chief minister Y.S. Rajashekar Reddy in 2008-09, the government bears the tuition fee of `35,000 plus `3,000 scholarship per annum for each student who scored over 400 marks in SSC exams to enable them to study Intermediate in corporate colleges like Narayana, Sri Chaitanya etc for two years.

The scheme was a huge success since it helped students from weaker sections to pursue intermediate in some of the top corporate colleges free of costs and enabled them to appear for national-level competitive exams like IIT-JEE, AIEEE, AFMC, JIPMER apart from Eamcet.

However, the scheme ran into rough weather last year after the government issued a GO in haste scrapping the scheme in May 2010 citing `financial constraints'.

However, it immediately backtracked on its orders after it encountered stiff resistance from various BC, SC and ST unions.

Around 24,000 students have been admitted under the scheme during the last three years and the government had paid `90 crore to the colleges as fee.

The scheme achieved desired results with majority of those students securing seats in engineering and medical courses.