A scholarship scam involving the Scheduled Caste students to the tune of several crores has surfaced again in Uttarakhand with the investigation having revealed embezzlement of the funds meant to be given to the SC students as scholarship by a number of private institutions based in Dehradun and some other parts of the State aside from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab for the years 2014-15 and 2015-16.
It is learnt that the private institutions enrolled SC/ST students from Vikasnagar, Pithoragarh, Uttarkashi and other places in professional courses with a view to appropriate the scholarship funds being provided to them by the Centre without seeing to it whether such students attended classes or not. The probe further revealed that most of such students flunked their first examination.
Sources said that an independent inquiry was conducted by a bureaucrat on the rank of additional secretary following which the blatant misappropriation of funds by some private institutions came into focus.
It was found that SC/ST students were enrolled in the private colleges with the college officials securing their signature in the forms to collect the scholarship from the social welfare department. When the students were asked about the names of the colleges they were studying in they failed to answer, according to the officials engaged in the probe. They even failed to inform about the banks where their bank accounts had been opened. “However, the private college officials had completed necessary documentation showing the number of SC/ST students being enrolled in the institutions.
Most of such students flunked the first annual examinations they appeared in almost all the subjects. A few of them passed through the grace marks,” said an official who probed the matter. However, intriguingly, the inquiry had been put on hold on the logic that the departmental inquiry that had been conducted into it had found nothing wrong. Sources say that the independent probe had been put on hold at the behest of an influential minister who was in favour of confining the probe to his department. However, the matter has reopened after a plea was made to the Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat to restart the probe, now being kept in abeyance.
Now, with the department being alert against such misappropriation of SC scholarship funds, thorough verification of the applicants is being done.
Manoj Chandran, additional secretary social welfare department, said that such scholarship fund has been distributed among the intended students after conducting through verification of the applicants for the past two financial years.“But the Centre has not yet released funds under the same scheme for the year 2016-2017,” he added.