New Delhi, 21st August 2023:
Ministry of Minority Affairs Banned the Fake Scholarship Beneficiaries and Institutions
If you are wondering why there is deafening silence on the embezzlement of funds under the Scholarship Schemes for Minorities, it is because there were fake beneficiaries and fake institutions getting scholarships in connivance with Schools, Institute Nodal Officers (INO) and Banking Correspondents (BC). The Ministry of Minority Affairs has accordingly referred the matter to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for investigation. Read more…
Scholarship schemes namely Pre-Matric Scholarships, Post-Matric Scholarships and Merit-cum-Means were introduced by the erstwhile UPA in the year 2007-08. Prior to 2014-15, funds were released directly to the state government/UTs without any mechanism to verify the applications and map the rightful use of funds.
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• In 2014-15, a fundamental change was introduced in disbursal of funds and scheme was implemented on DBT through an existing technological software based out of Hyderabad.
• It was only in 2016-17 that the schemes were shifted to the National Scholarship Portal (NSP) and implemented on DBT developed in Delhi. Thus, began the process of digitisation of scholarship schemes.
• As part of the NSP portal, verification of applications is done at 2 levels – first by INO appointed by the District/State Nodal Officer (DNO/SNO) and at second level it is verified by DNO/SNO appointed by the State Government.
• Once the application is verified by these 2 authorities, it is submitted to the portal/Ministry for disbursement of funds.
• As the digitisation process progressed, it was observed that INO, DNO and SNO ecosystem carried forward from the UPA era misused their authority and continued to compromise on veracity mechanism established through NSP.
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• In 2020, as instances of siphoning of funds came to fore, Ministry alerted the states namely Assam, Jharkhand, Bihar, Punjab and Chhattisgarh about the fraudulent practices in place.
• After taking charge in July 2022, Minister Smriti Irani ordered discontinuation of scholarships for minority students from Std 1 to 8, as education in all government institutes is mandated to be free of cost for every child upto Std 8. This was first strike on fraudulent funding.
• Further, in order to assess and evaluate the impact of these schemes, she instructed the Ministry to undertake a detailed study of the 3 aforementioned scholarship schemes through an external agency.
• National Council of Applied Economics Research (NCAER) was engaged to do the assessment across 34 states/UTs.
Findings of NCAER:
– NCAER evaluated 1,572 institutes from 21 states. Out of which, 830 (53%) institutions were found non-operational or fake. More than 1.8 lakh institutes receive scholarships.
– Chhattisgarh has 62 registered institutes, all were found to be fake. Similarly, in Rajasthan 99 institutes out of total 128 institutes were found to be fake.
– 229 INOs, which are to be appointed by the District officer were found to be fake. These fake nodal officers used AISHE/DISE code of either non operational institutes or operational institutes without their knowledge.
– DISE code of reputed institutions like Mayo College Ajmer were misused in this fraud.
– Between 2017-18 to 2021-22, more than 144 crore was granted to these institutes on account of scholarships.
– In one instance, it was found that minority applicants of one state claimed scholarships from an institute of Schedule Tribe Girls of other state.
Findings of the NCAER study clearly indicated a deep rooted institutionalised nexus between nodal officers of the institutes/madarsas and states, BCs and various other people on ground. These are the same people who indulged in fraudulent practices since 2007-08, when there was no accountability and mechanism to ensure proper implementation of schemes.
Taking note of these findings, Ministry has referred the matter to CBI for thorough investigation and bring every person responsible for siphoning off public money to justice.
Explains the secular silence?
If you are wondering why there is deafening silence on the embezzlement of funds under the Scholarship Schemes for Minorities, it is because there were fake beneficiaries and fake institutions getting scholarships in connivance with Schools, Institute Nodal Officers (INO) and… pic.twitter.com/eHMdcuaUuT
— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) August 20, 2023
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