New Delhi - Big decisions in government files are often buried in small lines. The end of the Commercial Pilot Licence (CPL) scholarship for Scheduled Caste students sits in one such line in the documents The Mooknayak has reviewed. The minutes of a Steering Committee meeting held on 7 July 2023 record that a "broader consensus" emerged on removing the CPL course from the scheme. Notably, the CPL scheme came into existence in 1994.
Article 338(9) of the Constitution requires the Union and every State Government to consult the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) on all major policy matters affecting Scheduled Castes. The Mooknayak found no mention of such consultation in the agenda, the minutes or the file noting it has seen. Now, more than three years later, the decision has drawn a political response: Rahul Gandhi has written to Social Justice Minister Dr. Virendra Kumar, asking him to restore the scholarship.
This policy decision concerning the Scheduled Caste community was taken without consulting the National Commission for Scheduled Castes; which not only violates constitutional provisions but has also over the past four years, deprived 200 eligible Dalit students of pursuing their dream careers, preventing them from realizing their aspirations of becoming pilots and soaring through the skies.
On 26 September, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi wrote to Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment Dr. Virendra Kumar. He demanded that the CPL scholarship be restored immediately and that all cases pending since 2023 be approved.
This letter was not written suddenly. There is representation of an organization from Mumbai behind it. On September 11, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar National Association of Engineers (BANAE), sent a detailed letter to Rahul Gandhi. The organization's national president, Nagsen Sonare, had requested Rahul Gandhi to treat this issue as "most urgent / on top priority" and personally raise it before the Minister of Social Justice. BANAE clearly wrote that this is not merely a scholarship complaint, but a question of compliance with constitutional safeguards in major policy decisions affecting Scheduled Castes. Fifteen days later, Rahul Gandhi wrote his letter to the minister and attached BANAE's full representation with it.
In his letter, Gandhi wrote, "Across the country, young Dalits dream of looking up at the sky and flying. For years, government scholarships made these dreams come true. Since 2023-24, these dreams have been shattered. In 2023-24, the CPL course was removed from the 'Top Class Scholarship Scheme' meant for SC students. The ministry says that eligible students can apply under the Post-Matric Scholarship for SC students." Rahul Gandhi says that there is no provision for CPL training in the guidelines of that scheme, and therefore "for most Dalit youth, the path to the cockpit has been closed."
The matter arose after a complaint by a Bahujan activist from Uttar Pradesh. Dwarka Prasad, a retired General Manager of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC), is the complainant in this entire episode, whose letter took the matter to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC). Through three years of relentless efforts, Dwarka Prasad collected documents through the Right to Information and uncovered the layers behind the closure of this ambitious scheme.
Dwarka Prasad, a resident of Mathura district, wrote a letter to the Chairman of the NCSC stating that the free scholarship and fee facility for the CPL course for SC students had been running for some three decades, and the Ministry of Social Justice arbitrarily shut it down. Dwarka Prasad says that hundreds of poor Scheduled Caste students had benefited from this scheme.
He alleged that this decision was taken in violation of Article 338(9), because it appears that the ministry did not consult the Commission before a major policy decision. He requested the Commission to raise this matter with the ministry.
On this very complaint, on January 19, 2026, the Commission's Under Secretary, K.J. Bhatt, sent a letter under file number ESDW/IP/UP/2024/259953 to the Secretary of the Department of Social Justice. In it, Dwarka Prasad's report was attached for "appropriate action," and a copy of the letter was also given to him. This very letter of the Commission later became a reference in both BANAE's representation and Rahul Gandhi's letter. Even more than seven months after this letter of the Commission, no effective solution has emerged.
To understand what changed, one has to go back. The document of the Centrally Sponsored Post Matric Scholarship scheme effective from 1 July 2010 (PMS-2010) records CPL clearly. It placed CPL in Group I courses, the same category that covers medicine, engineering and management. The CPL course included the Commercial Helicopter Pilot Licence and multi-engine rating training on A-320 and similar aircraft. Fifty CPL awards were fixed for the whole country each year. States and Union Territories scrutinised applications and sent the names of eligible candidates to the Ministry, which cleared awards on a first-come, first-served basis up to the national limit of 50. Selected candidates received a maintenance allowance at the Group I rate, which was ₹1,200 a month for hostellers and ₹550 for day scholars. All compulsory fees were also provided, including flight charges. The same document carries an exclusion: scholarships were not awarded for Private Pilot Licence courses or Aircraft Maintenance Engineer courses. CPL, in other words, was not among the exceptions. It was among the courses that were funded.
Speaking to The Mooknayak, BANAE President Nagsen Sonare states that the CPL scholarship was not a new concession; it was an already established facility that the government had recognized as a form of specialized professional education. Sonare also cited the 2005-06 Union Budget, in which the then Finance Minister announced in Parliament that the three existing scholarship schemes for SC/ST students : pre-matric, post-matric, and merit-based would continue. In that same speech, he proposed a new scholarship avenue for SC/ST students securing admission to select institutes of excellence. This eventually evolved into the "Top Class Education for SC Students" scheme, which came into effect in June 2007.
Sonare notes that while CPL was removed from the original post-matric scholarship framework in 2018, the government did not discontinue it at that time; instead, the benefit was transferred to the "Top Class Education" scheme. The guidelines for this scheme, effective from September 2018, include a provision allowing DGCA-recognized government or CPSE-run institutes offering CPL and type-rating courses to be listed under the scheme. The organization highlights this as a crucial distinction: in 2018, only the scholarship's administrative category changed while the facility itself remained intact, whereas in 2023, the facility was abolished entirely.
The way the CPL scholarship was ended can be pieced together from the documents the Ministry supplied with its RTI response to Dwarika Prasad. The pages belong to file number V-11017/18/2022-SCD-I and carry a note that they were generated from the Ministry's Office on 22 November 2024. They include the approved minutes of the Steering Committee, the meeting agenda, the list of participants and the file noting.
The Steering Committee of the Top Class Education scheme met on 7 July 2023 . It was chaired by the then Secretary of the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment, Saurabh Garg. Also present from the Department were Sanjay Pandey, Joint Secretary and Financial Adviser, Joint Secretary Kalyani Chadha and Deputy Secretary Mahesh Kumar Meena. From other ministries and bodies came P.K. Banerjee, Joint Secretary (Scholarship), Department of Higher Education; Rajesh Kumar Yadav, Joint Secretary, Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities; Megha Kaushik, Deputy Secretary, UGC; S.F. Bachagundi, Joint Director, Ministry of Tribal Affairs; and Arunava Dey of NITI Aayog. The main business was the allotment of 200 new slots available for 2023–24 on the recommendation of the EFC. The agenda also covered removing institutes that had not participated for three years, restricting fresh scholarships to first-year students, and the question of flying institutes.
The agenda item on flying institutes laid out several facts. The scheme, it said, had two kinds of flying institutes: CPL training institutes and Type Rating institutes. A candidate has to complete both courses to become employable. All CPL training institutes were government-run, while all Type Rating institutes, after the privatisation of Air India, were private. The average fee for each course was stated as ₹20–25 lakh. For private institutes in the flying sector, the scholarship ceiling was ₹3.72 lakh per student per year, whereas for government institutes there was no such ceiling and full tuition fee was reimbursed. Twelve flying institutes were empanelled in all, but for CPL training, proposals came regularly from only two: the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Akademi and the Telangana State Aviation Academy. The item ended by saying that the Committee might discuss the relevance of continuing flying courses under the scheme.
According to the minutes, the issue was discussed "at length." The reasons recorded were that a candidate must undergo Type Rating after CPL to become employable, and that after the privatisation of Air India no institute was sending proposals for Type Rating because of the ₹3.72 lakh ceiling for private institutes.
The minutes state that the "broader consensus" was to remove the CPL course from the scheme, keeping in view the very high fee and the lack of certainty about employment for beneficiary students, and that the 55 slots allotted to flying institutes be redistributed among newly empanelled institutes.
A request from Red Bird Flying Club, Delhi, to be empanelled was also before the Committee. According to the file noting, the Committee did not agree to it because it had decided to de-empanel all flying institutes.
CPL was not the only decision at that meeting. The Committee also decided to bring in 42 "Institutes of National Importance" with three slots each. The minutes record that the Secretary suggested NISER and IISER be empanelled as well, and that NIFT Calcutta's request was accepted. Thirty-one institutes that had not taken part for three years were removed, and fresh slots were raised from 1,500 to 1,700. Fresh scholarships were restricted to first-year students, the exemption from submitting an income certificate for those who had studied in government schools was withdrawn, and a study was ordered on the high drop-out rate among selected students.
The file noting contains the accounting for these decisions. According to the note, 259 institutions were empanelled in the scheme, and fresh slots had been fixed at 1,500 for 2021–22. On the EFC's recommendation they were to rise to 1,600 in 2022–23, 1,700 in 2023–24, 1,800 in 2024–25 and 1,900 in 2025–26. The note summarises the meeting's decisions. It records that the average expenditure on each flying course is ₹25–35 lakh, whereas the agenda had put it at ₹20–25 lakh. According to the note, private institutes were not sending proposals for Type Rating because of the ₹3.72 lakh ceiling, so the Committee decided to de-empanel all flying institutes and redistribute their existing 55 slots.
The count of vacant slots is also in the note. Adding 200 new slots, the slots of the 31 institutes to be removed and the 55 flying-institute slots gave 286. It was then found that six institutes appeared in both the non-participating list and the flying-institute list, so after correction the vacant slots came to 280. Of these, 126 went to the 42 Institutes of National Importance, three each to NIFT Calcutta and NISER Bhubaneswar, and the remaining 148 were added to existing institutes. In the revised guidelines, flying institutes, both CPL and Type Rating, were deleted from the list of empanelled institutes. The note ends by placing the draft revised guidelines before the Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment for approval.
The pages carry a sequence of file notings between 1 August and 22 August 2023, with names and timestamps running from section officer up to Secretary.
In 2007, Dr. Buta Singh, Chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC), had expressed concern that the government was not consulting the Commission on decisions and measures affecting the rights of Scheduled Castes. The Commission summoned the Law Secretary on August 7, 2007. The discussion centered on the fact that the Commission was not being consulted during the formulation of key laws and regulations that impacted the interests of Scheduled Castes.
In its RTI reply, the Ministry cited paragraph 7 of the scheme guidelines, which sets out the composition and powers of the Steering Committee. The Committee recommends the addition or deletion of institutions, distributes slots equitably and recommends appropriate modifications to the scheme when necessary. On that basis, the reply concludes that there is no provision for correspondence with the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) before revision of the scheme. TM found no reference to consulting the NCSC in the agenda, the minutes or the file noting that is visible.
This is the pivot of BANAE's representation. Article 338(9) of the Constitution provides that the Union and every State Government shall consult the Commission on all major policy matters affecting Scheduled Castes. The organisation argues that the complete abolition of an established scholarship for SC students is a "major policy matter," so prior consultation with the Commission was required. It calls the RTI reasoning an answer to "the wrong question." The constitutional requirement, it says, does not depend on whether a departmental scheme contains a clause on correspondence with the NCSC. The real question is whether this was a major policy matter affecting Scheduled Castes within the meaning of Article 338(9). In the organisation's words, "A departmental scheme cannot override, dilute or dispense with a constitutional mandate." It adds that the Steering Committee may have had authority to add or delete institutions and redistribute slots, but when the consequence is the complete abolition of CPL scholarship for SC students the matter takes on a far wider policy and constitutional character, and internal administrative powers cannot override a constitutional safeguard.
The most notable part of the representation is a government letter from 2007, which BANAE describes as being of "extraordinary significance." On 26 October 2007, Law Secretary T.K. Viswanathan of the Ministry of Law and Justice wrote a D.O. letter (No. 11051/07/Advice-A) to the then Cabinet Secretary, K.M. Chandrasekhar. According to the letter, on 7 August 2007 the National Commission for Scheduled Castes had called the Law Secretary to discuss the Commission not being consulted in making substantive legislation and rules affecting the interests of Scheduled Castes. The Commission's then Chairman, Dr. Buta Singh, expressed serious concern in no uncertain terms that non-consultation violated Article 338(9). The Law Secretary then asked the Cabinet Secretary to advise all Ministries and Departments to strictly follow the provision.
BANAE's argument is that this letter shows Article 338(9) was not an obscure or unforeseen question in 2023, because the Government of India's own Law Secretary had sought strict compliance by all Ministries as far back as 2007. The organisation therefore wants the Ministry to explain whether the letter was considered while the 2023 proposal was prepared, whether consequential instructions were issued to Ministries, whether the Ministry knew of them, whether any legal opinion was obtained, and on what legal basis consultation with the NCSC was considered unnecessary.
BANAE emphasizes that this matter cannot be resolved by a routine RTI reply. In its representation, the organization has raised ten questions, the answers to which can be found only through a full investigation. These questions are: who prepared the agenda for CPL and flying institutions, who prepared the background note, who examined the implications of Article 338(9), was the NCSC consulted before July 7, 2023, and if not, who deemed it unnecessary. The organization also asks whether the 2007 letter of the Law Secretary was considered, whether any legal opinion was taken, whether the committee was informed that the CPL scholarship had been an established facility for SC students, and whether it was told that the result of the proposal would be the complete elimination of the facility. The final question is whether the decision was presented like an ordinary institutional or administrative matter, whereas its actual consequence was a major policy change affecting Scheduled Castes. Connect with social work.
On the basis of these very questions, the organization requested Rahul Gandhi to intervene. It wants Rahul Gandhi to speak personally with the minister, draw his attention to the 2007 letter of the Law Secretary, and ask the ministry to summon and examine the complete original file of the July 7, 2023 decision, including the agenda, background note, notings, legal opinion, approvals, minutes, correspondence, and revised guidelines.
The organization requests that it be examined whether the complete elimination of the CPL scholarship was a major policy matter under Article 338(9), and that before any final decision to continue, modify, discontinue, or restore CPL, the matter be sent to the NCSC for consultation. If the investigation establishes deliberate omission, concealment of facts, misleading the competent authority, gross negligence, or disregard of constitutional obligation, there is also a demand for action against the concerned officials in accordance with the rules.
The most important demand is that the scholarship be immediately restored or revived with provisions for CPL, CHPL, and multi-engine rating as well as mandatory flight charges, with appropriate eligibility and institutional safeguard measures. Finally, the organization has also demanded that the backlog of 200 CPL/CHPL scholarships pending since 2023 be filled.
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