A whopping Rs 500 crore misappropriation has come to light after a year-long audit of centrally-sponsored Post-Matric Scholarship Scheme for the students belonging to the scheduled caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) categories in Punjab.
Alarmed, the State Government has now decided to initiate stern action against the guilty institutions, besides recovering the amount along with nine percent interest.
“It has been noticed that many private technical institutes in the state have pocketed Rs 500 crores of students belonging to the SC/ST categories by showing fake admissions,” said the state Scheduled Castes, Backward Classes and Minority Welfare Minister Sadhu Singh Dharamsot on Wednesday.
Minister admitted that he suspect an embezzlement of Rs 500 crore has surfaced during the audit. “Stern action would be taken against guilty institutions and amount would be recovered from them with nine percent interest,” he said.
The state Finance Minister Manpreet Badal ha also recommended a punitive action against such institutions indulging in cheating with the students.
The latest report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India had also pointed irregularities in the post-matric scholarship scheme, under which the Centre pays 100 percent of SC students’ fee for secondary and higher education.
The CAG report alleged that many private and government institutions swindled money by making the students payIJIJ the fee at the time of admission, and later claiming the fee and allowances from the government under the scheme, without passing on the reimbursements to the students. It pointed that the institutions received “double the fee” for every SC student.
The report stated that during the sessions 2013 to 2017, 16 government institutions collected over Rs five crore which should have rightfully gone to almost 20,000 students, while 12 private institutions collected over Rs 3.3 crore, which should have been distributed among 17,000 students.
As part of the post-matric scheme, the state “overpaid” crores to hundreds of institutions for study tours and procurement of books. In government institutions, where SC students are provided free lodging and boarding facilities, the government granted reimbursement to students for amounts they had not even spent on living in the hostels.
In over 40 institutions, almost 2,500 students left midway through their post-matric courses, but the institutions continued to claim their fees and allowances from the government.
CAG also found that the centralized web portal maintained by the state — which collected data of all eligible students under the post-matric scheme — was full of defects having hundreds of cases where fake or ineligible students had been given the benefit of the scheme, while hundreds of genuine claimants had been left out.