CAG flags Rs 6.06 crore Odisha mineral fund grant for five students’ Australia study

BHUBANESWAR: The Comptroller and Auditor General has flagged Keonjhar District Mineral Foundation’s Rs 6.06 crore grant for five students to study in Australia, saying the expenditure was not permitted under the governing rules.

The students had been selected for a Master of Professional Engineering in Mining course at Curtin University. The grant, sanctioned on August 12, 2023, covered course fees, health insurance and living costs, according to the CAG’s performance audit.

The report said the grant was approved without the consent of the DMF Board of Trustees or its Executive Committee. The amount was released to the Government College of Engineering, Keonjhar, two days after sanction.

Utilisation certificates showed that Rs 2.57 crore had been spent by December 2024. The remaining Rs 3.49 crore was transferred to four term-deposit accounts of the college that month.

The auditor said the unspent sum had remained unused for 19 months, from August 2023 to March 2025. It estimated that the DMF potentially lost Rs 37.91 lakh in interest by March 2025.

The report said Odisha’s DMF rules permit education spending on facilities and services such as school buildings, laboratories, hostels, teachers, transport and nutrition programmes. They do not provide for sponsoring select students for higher studies abroad.

In a January 2026 reply, the state government said the expenditure was made in good faith to empower local youth and was aligned with Sustainable Development Goals and DMF objectives. The CAG rejected the explanation, saying overseas higher study was not covered by the Odisha DMF Rules or PMKKKY guidelines.

The audit also flagged Keonjhar DMF spending on free textbooks and uniforms, and Jajpur DMF spending on private medical coaching. It said only six of the 437 students coached during 2018-20 and 2022-24 qualified the entrance examination for admission to medical colleges.