The UPA Government’s ambitious schemes to provide scholarships to underprivileged religious minority community students have hit a constitutional bar. The Supreme Court has asked the Centre to explain why such State-funded benefit should be restricted to only one section of the people and not extended to every poor student irrespective of religion. The court has set a one-month deadline for the Centre to respond after the schemes were challenged for being violative of the sacred Constitutional principle — non-discrimination on grounds of religion.