The West Bengal government on Tuesday said its ‘Yogyashree’ scheme for students will now include beneficiaries from the minority, OBC and general categories.

The scheme was launched in January to provide free-of-cost training to SC and ST students of the state for engineering and medical courses.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, in a post on X, said the scheme has been yielding increasingly greater benefits for the SC/ST students.

“Now, we shall include the boys and girls of Minority, OBC and General categories also in this scheme,” she said.

Banerjee said in 2024 alone, 'Yogyashree' trainees got 23 ranks (including 13 IIT seats) in JEE (Advanced), 75 ranks in JEE (Main), 432 ranks in WBJEE, and 110 ranks in NEET.

“In consideration of the value of this critical training support to our disadvantaged boys and girls, we have increased the number of centres in the state now to 50, and number of our supported trainees to 2,000, and the training will be given from Class XI onwards for better preparation,” the CM said.

“Let our boys and girls from the weaker sections be engineers and doctors in larger numbers,” she added.

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