Govt releases SC scholarships as probe into fund misuse on

Rajmeet Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 29

With elections in sight, the state government has released the pending amount of the Post-Matric Scholarship Scheme for SC students to government and private institutions.

The scholarship amount is being released even though a high-level probe into the large-scale “misutilisation” of the amount by private institutions imparting higher education is underway.

A senior official confirmed that nearly Rs 100 crore has been released to the beneficiaries studying in government and private institutions. The pending amount to government institutions for 2014-2015 has also been cleared, he added.

The Social Welfare Department has released one-fifth (20 per cent) of the total pending scholarship of the private institutions and one-third (30 per cent) of the total pending scholarship amount to the government institutions.

A sum of Rs 51 crore has been released to technical institutions for this period.

Sources said due to the pending inquiry, the scholarship amount to the institutions being run under DPI (Colleges), SCERT, Animal Husbandry and Directorate of Research and Medical Education (DRME) were being affected.

The government buckled under pressure after the Vijay Sampla, Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment, took up the issue with CM Parkash Singh Badal and Social Welfare Minister Gulzar Singh Rainke.

A sum of Rs 60 crore had already been surrendered by certain reputed private colleges and private universities against the bogus admission done by them to claim the scholarship amount.

Sampla said that after meeting Badal, Rs 173 crore had been released by the Centre last week.

Money to be credited to students’ accounts

Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, Vijay Sampla said apart from linking Aadhaar with the student identity, the Centre was mulling to credit the scholarship to the students accounts and the tuition fee in to the account of the respective institutions for 2016-2017.

The ministry was also coming out with a policy wherein the fee of government and private institutions for different higher education courses would be uniform.