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NEW DELHI: The government has provided scholarships to more than three crore students belonging to the minority community during the last five years, Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said Thursday.

In a reply to a question in the Lok Sabha , the Union minority affairs minister said 3.18 crore students from the six centrally notified minorities -- Jain, Buddhist, Sikh, Parsi , Muslim and Christian -- have been provided scholarships.

"Out of these, girls constitute more than 50 per cent of the beneficiaries. During the next five years, the Ministry of Minority Affairs (MoMA) proposes to provide pre-matric, post-matric and merit-cum-means scholarships to five crore economically weaker-section students from the six centrally notified minority communities," he said.

The scholarship schemes are now being implemented through the National Scholarship Portal. Since 2015, the scholarship schemes are being implemented under direct benefit transfer (DBT) mode to improve efficiency and bring transparency by removing duplicity and stopping pilferages, he said.

