KATHMANDU, April 25: Supreme Court has asked the secretary at the Ministry of Education to furnish detail records of individuals who have received government scholarships but failed to provide their services to the government after completing their studies, a requirement under the scholarship porgram.
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A division bench of Justices Kalyan Shrestha and Govinda Kumar Upadhyaya recently issued the order to the secretary to furnish the detail within 2 months through the Office of Attorney General.
The order was issued on Wednesday while hearing the writ petition filed by Advocate Jagannath Mishra some four years ago. The bench has asked to furnish the detail of how many scholars have reported to the ministry, how many of them have served the government and how many of them were punished as per the Scholarship Act 1964.Scholarships Act 1964 and its amendments envisaged that any person getting scholarship from Government of Nepal shall submit a report to Ministry of Education within three months after the study period is over. Likewise, the act also envisaged that the government may within one year engage the person in any post in an organization for a period up to five years and it shall be the duty of the concerned person to be engaged in the service accordingly.
Since the act was promulgated to regulate the distribution of scholarship provided by any national or foreign institution to the Government of Nepal, it envisaged that the act of serving the nation should be the duty of the recipients of the scholarship.
However, it has been reported that the scholars are evading legal provisions and the government has failed to enforce the act. After getting some evidences of medical doctors evading the provisions, Forum for Protection of Consumer Rights Nepal urged the ministry, at least three times, to provide information of scholars evading the legal provisions of providing service to the government.
As the ministry denied the request, Advocate Mishra moved the case to the apex court in July, 2011. Mishra has argued that the scholars have not fulfilled the duties envisaged by the act. In the petition, he has raised question over the government's move to introduce Guideline for Mobilization of Scholarship Doctors with the provision of seeking only two years' service from the doctors. The petitioner has also argued that government is getting nothing despite investing hundreds of thousands of rupees for training per doctor.
The act also has the provisions of punishing the evaders. "If a person, who has gone for study with scholarship pursuant to this Act, does not appear before the Ministry of Education to contact after completing his/her study, he/she shall be fined a amount equivalent to the total expenditure paid for him/her while doing study in such scholarship and any donation provided to him/her for such study by the Government of Nepal or any other institution, if any," states the act.
"The recent order of the apex court, in response to the petition, has given us a hope that the government will enforce provisions of the act," said Jyoti Baniya, the chairman of Forum for the Protection of Consumer Rights Nepal.
