Rahul Gandhi, the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha has written to prime minister Narendra Modi Tuesday about two issues that denied educational opportunities to the marginalized communities.

Highlighting two major issues in the letter dated June 10, Gandhi highlighted the poor conditions in residential hostels of students from backward communities and said that delays in their post-matric scholarships put them through hardships.

“Firstly, the conditions in residential hostels for students from Dalit, ST, EBC, OBC and minority communities are deplorable,” the congress leader said.

Citing from his visit to the Ambedkar Hostel in Darbhanga, Bihar, he alleged that students had shared several concerns about the state of the facilities and poor conditions that did not support their learning.

Among the concerns, he said, were overcrowded rooms where over 6 students were forced to share a single space, unhygienic toilets, unsafe drinking water, no proper mess facilities, and a complete lack of access to libraries or the internet. Gandhi also drew attention to the severe delays in disbursing post-matric scholarships to those from marginalised communities.

He cited the example of Bihar, a state that has been receiving a greater share of attention in subsequent budgets that the scholarship portal had remained non-functional for three years, resulting in no student receiving aid during that period.

Inputs from TOI

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