Probe reveals major scam in minority ministry's scholarship program

About 53 per cent of the institutions active under the minority scholarship programme have been found to be 'fake'.

According to an India Today report, an internal enquiry done by the Ministry of Minority Affairs showed corruption in as many as 830 institutions, which has led to a scam of over Rs 144 crores in the last 5 years.

The report states that the ministry had officially lodged a company in this matter back on July 10, with Union Minister Smriti Irani also having escalated the matter to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for further probe.

The probe was conducted in as many as 100 districts across the country, with 830 of a total of 1,572 institutions having been found to be involved in fraudulent activities.

Since investigations are still ongoing with only data from 21 out of 34 states being collected yet, the authorities have called for the freezing of funds of such institutions.

The initiative was launched back in 2007, during the start of the academic year, with the scholarship program extending to over 1,80,000 institutions, and covers students from class 1 to higher education. It has been found that the said institutions claimed funds which were meant for students from minority sections, by including fake beneficiaries for the program.

According to the report, the CBI will probe the nodal officers of such institutions who approved the reports, as well as district nodal officers who verified fake cases. The probe agency will also look into how multiple states allowed such a scam for many years.

The ministry has also raised questions on how banks allowed for the opening of fake accounts for beneficiaries, using fake documents, sources told the publication.

They also claimed that many of these institutions which have come under scrutiny, managed to register on National Scholarship Portal as well as the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE), despite being non-existent or non-operational.

Various red flags were found during the probe which showed that a certain bank branch in Kerala's Malappuram district issued 66,000 scholarships, which surpassed the number of registered minority students who are eligible for scholarships.

Similarly, in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag, a college which had only 5,000 registered students claimed 7,000 scholarships.

In Punjab, too, many students were said to have received scholarships even though they were not enrolled in any schools.