AP, TS institutes named in minority scholarship scam

 Hyderabad: At least five institutes in Andhra Pradesh and 11 institutes in Telangana had indulged in minority scholarship scams. The CBI on Tuesday registered cases against 830 institutes nationwide for misusing Rs 144 crore funds under the minority scholarship programme between 2017 and 2022. In Andhra Pradesh, 11 institutes are located and in Telangana 59.

Indevar Pandey, secretary of the ministry of minority welfare, lodged a complaint with CBI in Delhi stating that they found that a number of institutes misused funds by submitting fake and forged documents. Based on the complaint, CBI officials registered cases of forgery, criminal conspiracy, cheating, using forged documents as genuine, and others.

The ministry implements three scholarship schemes —Pre-Matric, Post-Matric and Merit­ cum-Means for the students from Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, and Parsis.  The scholarships are provided to minority students studying in more than 1.8 lakh institutions. In the last five years ending 2021-22, of 65 lakh students received the scholarships every year.

The ministry said it had engaged the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) to carry out a third-party evaluation of the scholarship schemes. It also carried out evaluation through the National Scholarship Portal (NSP). A total of 1,572 institutes were identified for evaluation based on red flags generated on NSP. Out of 1,572 institutions from 21 states, 830 institutions were found either non-operational fake or partially fake.

"In states like Telangana, Andhra Pradesh Schools have not disabled their old UDISE code and are using both codes to fill out applications. Schools have different UDISE code for different levels of education provided by them. One institute in the Hyderabad district was verified and found fake. It was informed by the NCAER while sharing the Interim Report of the Study," a CBI official said.