At present, fake madrasas and tribal schools and roles played by officials and banks are under investigation.
A recent survey uncovered a massive scam amounting to crores of rupees across 21 states.
The report also highlights the existence of 40 crore fraudulent bank accounts.
In 2016, the ministry of Minority Affairs digitised the scholarship allotment process and the money transfer was made directly into the accounts of the students.
In July 2022, the union government stopped the scholarship given to minority students, totalling around 4 million, from Class I to Class VIII. The government perhaps expected a major backlash as Modi government’sdetractors and opposition parties could not remain silent on a matter involving thousands of ‘MINORITY’ students !
But since that didn’t happen, officials got suspicious.
The National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) then conducted a probe.
Under Modi, Najma Heptulla has been Minister for Minority Affairs between May 26, 2014 to July 12, 2016. Since then Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi was the Minister for 5 years, 359 days till July 6, 2022.
Smriti Irani took over after that.
Union Minister for Women and Child Development and Minority Affairs Smriti Irani has in July 2023 ordered a CBI probe.
The CBI will probe how banks allowed the opening of fake accounts for beneficiaries, with fake Aadhar cards and KYC documents.
How the nodal officers of these institutions who gave approval reports, the district nodal officers who verified the fake cases, and how multiple states allowed this scam to persist over the years, reports said.
The Ministry of Minority Affairs following the Prime Minister’s (Manmohan Singh regime) New 15 Point Programme for the Welfare of Minorities, ran three scholarship schemes.
– Pre-matric Scholarship, Post-matric Scholarship and Merit-cum-means Scholarship scheme for technical and professional courses
The third scheme was launched in 2007-08 and cumulatively 79,435 scholarships have been awarded by 2010.
One more information can be provided here is that (in 2010) around 35,000 scholarships have been awarded to meritorious girl students since 2006-07 under the Meritorious Girl’s Scholarship Scheme of Maulana Azad Education Foundation (MAEF). There is another scheme – Maulana Azad National Fellowship scheme of the Ministry of Minority Affairs.
Now, ‘India Today’ report says, “In the biggest minority scholarship scam in India, about 53 per cent of institutions active under the minority scholarship programme have been found to be ‘fake’. An internal enquiry conducted by the Ministry of Minority Affairs revealed deep-rooted corruption in as many as 830 such institutions, leading to a scam of Rs 144.83 crore in the past 5 years.”
In some states, the finding was rather shocking. In Chhattisgarh, all 62 scrutinized institutions were found to be fake or non-operational, in West Bengal, 39 percent of institutions were found to be fake and in Rajasthan, out of 128 institutions scrutinized, a whopping 99 were fake or non-operational.
From Assam, there was a shocking revelation of 68 percent fake institutions claiming the scholarships and in Karnataka, it stood at : 64 percent of institutions were found to be fake.
At least 44 percent of institutions were found to be fake in Uttar Pradesh.
The Ministry of Minority Affairs had officially lodged its complaint in the matter on July 10. The investigation involved enquiries in 100 districts across 34 states.
Out of the 1572 institutions scrutinised, 830 were found to be involved in fraudulent activities. The statistics come from 21 out of the 34 states, while investigations into the institutions in remaining states are still underway.
The central government provides scholarships for minority students under the scheme started in 2007-08. As per ministry data, Rs 22,000 crore had been given as scholarships till 2021-22.
As many as 1,32000 students were reportedly claiming scholarships for hostel facilities without any hostel in their institutions.
There were several gross irregularities. In Malappuram, Kerala, one bank branch disbursed 66,000 scholarships, surpassing the registered number of minority students eligible for scholarships.
In Anantnag, Jammu and Kashmir, a college with 5,000 registered students claimed 7,000 scholarships
One mobile number of a parent was associated with 22 children, all supposedly in class IX.
In Assam, a bank branch allegedly had 66,000 beneficiaries, and the verification team was threatened at a madrasa when they attempted to verify student details.
The ‘verification’ of whether a student is eligible for scholarship or not is done by a nodal officer of the institute. It is later approved by the district nodal officer, a government employee. As per the report, 229 nodal officers in the institutions turned out to be fake.
The investigation encompasses over 8 crore scholarships across 21 states, with 80 percent of them directed towards Muslim groups.
At present, fake madrasas, tribal schools and officials are under investigation, they said.
Investigations revealed for the year 2018-2019, a single mobile number was associated with all 2239 scholarships.In the period between 2019 and 2021, a total of 577 scholarships were linked to a single mobile number, as per reports.
