Govt starts recovering embezzled scholarship funds

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 20

In a multi-crore scam of irregular disbursal of funds under the post-Matric scholarship scheme for Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes, the Social Welfare Department has started recovery proceedings against about 30 erring private colleges.

Apart from the recovery proceedings, criminal cases can be registered against private educational institutions.

Instead of recovering embezzled scholarship money from private educational institutions, officials of the department allegedly connived with the institutions to release the scholarship amount.

The total money involved in the scam is believed to be Rs100 crore, but the department has detected irregular payments of about Rs50 crore.

The department is already probing as to how officials allegedly fudged audit reports of the Finance Department and conducted a parallel inspection to benefit certain institutions. The department adopted a pick-and-choose policy, which was against a Cabinet decision.

The Congress government led by Capt Amarinder Singh, on coming to power, had conducted a special audit on allegations of fake admission and bogus scholarship claims by educational institutions from 2011-12 to 2016-17, when the SAD-BJP government held the reins of the state.