November 14, 2020 4:32:36 am
In Jharkhand, where Rs 61 million was disbursed under the scholarship for 2019-20, the Dhanbad district administration filed FIRs against more than 105 individuals, including intermediaries and local officials.
The JHARKHAND Superior Court has included for this month’s hearing a petition urging you to hear motu of the findings on an investigation by The Indian Express, which revealed how a nexus of intermediaries, bank correspondents, school personnel, and government officials illegally diverted funds disbursed under the Center for Poor Minority Students pre-matriculation scholarship.
Submitted by Superior Court attorney Mohammad Shadab Ansari, the statement also seeks instructions from the court for the state DGP to set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) made up of senior officers to investigate the scam. The court listed the guilty plea, emailed Wednesday by Ranchi-based Ansari, for his hearing on November 27.
Addressed to the Chief Justice Ravi Ranjan, the petition read: “It is to inform the Honorable Member that … The Indian Express published an investigative report … (on) the large scale of corruption and diversion of scholarship funds minorities. In this embezzlement and diversion of scholarship funds, many government agencies / officials (state and district level), school authorities, intermediaries, bank officials, etc. are involved. “
READ | Scholarship scam spreads to Bihar, strings at school also from Punjab
The statement said that it is “pertinent to mention here that in this corruption, the authentication of the Aadhaar card is also misused by the defendants and payments were made to people who are not even students.”
He noted that due to corruption, many “deserving poor students” did not get the scholarship benefit, while many “ineligible people” did get the amount. “Therefore, it is requested that the Honorable Member learn suo motu … and order the registry to present a PIL so that the case can be monitored,” Ansari wrote in the guilty plea.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Ansari said that “government officials from top to bottom” are allegedly involved in the “big scam” that has “affected thousands of poor students.” “It is likely that the investigation will be compromised, so I approached the Honorable Supreme Court to intervene in the matter so that all guilty are caught and punished,” he said.
During its investigation, The Indian Express compared the entries in the National Scholarship Portal (NSP) with the bank accounts of the recipients in the Public Finance Management System (PFMS) to discover how the direct benefits transfer scheme was being derailed. for corruption, despite checks such as Aadhaar cards and fingerprints and school verification at the state level.
After this newspaper published a series of reports starting on October 31 about the scam, which stretched from Jharkhand to Bihar and also involved schools in Punjab and Assam, the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs, which administers the scholarship , decided to ask the CBI to investigate.
Subsequently, the police in Gaya de Bihar registered an FIR, and the CID in Assam arrested 21 people, including four principals and a teacher, on charges of fraud and forgery after a separate investigation into the scam.
In Jharkhand, where Rs 61 million was disbursed under the scholarship for 2019-20, the Dhanbad district administration filed FIRs against more than 105 individuals, including intermediaries and local officials. A 59-page investigative report prepared by a team led by the Additional District Magistrate (Law and Order) referenced the findings of The Indian Express and cited several suspects naming state and district personnel, school authorities and even some politicians.
This pre-matriculation scholarship scheme, launched in 2008, is intended to help students from minority communities, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Parsis, Jain and Buddhist, from families with annual incomes less than 1 lakh of rupees.
To be eligible, students must score at least 50 percent on their class tests. Students in classes 1 to 5 receive Rs 1,000 per year, and students in classes 6 to 10 receive Rs 5,700 per year if they are day scholars or Rs 10,700 if they are in a hostel. Most of the corruption, The Indian Express discovered, is related to these last two categories.
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