Education schemes hit hard as minority welfare spending falls below 50%

Amid concerns raised during the recent Telangana Assembly Budget session over the gap between allocations and actual spending on Minorities Welfare, official documents reveal that less than 50% of the earmarked funds were utilised.

A Right to Information request filed by Kareem Ansari, an activist with the portal youRTI.in, stated that the aim was to track the performance of government schemes across departments.

According to the information sought, including per-head allocation, fund releases and actual expenditure, the Minorities Welfare Department, which was allocated ₹3,585.03 crore in FY 2025-26, spent only ₹1,703.30 crore, or 47.5% of the total.

One area that witnessed glaringly low spending was education. A primary example is the disbursal of funds for the Reimbursement of Tuition Fee (RTF) scheme, under which the government extends financial assistance to college students by paying their fees. While the allocation and release were ₹300 crore each, only ₹68.88 crore was spent.

The data shows that no funds were spent on the pre-matric (GoI) scholarship scheme, which had an allocation of ₹1.73 crore. While the government dragged its feet on these schemes, there was a silver lining in the form of the Chief Minister’s Overseas Scholarship, which covers airfare and tuition in foreign universities. The scheme saw an expenditure of ₹172.27 crore against an allocation of ₹130 crore. However, the number of beneficiaries under this scheme is significantly smaller compared to those under RTF.

While ₹4 crore was allocated for study circles, only ₹3 lakh was spent. The Centre for Educational Development of Minorities, with Osmania University as the nodal agency, was allotted ₹4 crore but recorded an expenditure of ₹63 lakh. The Telangana Minorities Residential Educational Institutions Society was allocated a budget of around ₹995 crore, but the expenditure was around ₹850 crore.

“In the current financial year, the government reduced the RTF budget by ₹200 crore. We are now seeing very low spending in the previous year,” said Mohammed Faraz Ahmed, State president of the Students Islamic Organisation.

He said that the recent interim orders of the High Court permitting private engineering colleges to collect fees directly from students in case the government fails to reimburse them will have a huge impact. “The government should appeal against this order,” he said.