How a Scholarship Fraud in UP has siphoned Rs 75 cr!
In the latest developments, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) conducted searches at 22 locations in Uttar Pradesh in relation to the large-scale scholarship scam.
What is the Scholarship Scam?
The Government offers various scholarships to help out meritorious and economically disadvantaged students. Taking advantage of this, some educational institutes in UP announced post-matriculation government scholarships meant for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Persons with Disability, Economically Backward Class (EWS) and other minority and tribal communities.
The probe has revealed that the institutions availed these scholarships in the name of ineligible candidates and used the money for personal gains.
In a statement, ED mentions “ED investigation revealed that in order to avail more and more of scholarship funds, these colleges and institutes used bank accounts of children in the age group of 7 to 12 years and persons in the age group of 45 years and above. Investigation conducted so far revealed that these institutes opened around 3,000 such accounts using documents of various persons. Most of the accounts are in the name of simple villagers who are not even aware of these bank accounts and have never received any scholarships till date.”
The probe has also brought into notice the involvement of various agents who helped in opening bank accounts in banks such as FINO Payment Bank and receiving the payments and withdrawing it.
ED also added, “Further, with active aid and assistance of FINO agents, institutes arranged to take undated, pre-signed blank cheque books of these accounts in their custody and misappropriated scholarship funds in accordance with their wishes. In some cases, the institutes and their employees even managed to illegally receive and use the IDs and passwords originally issued to the FINO bank agents by bank and also managed to operate Micro ATM issued by the bank on the institutes’ premises.”
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Some institutes like S S Institute of Management, Mampur, Lucknow; Hygia College of Pharmacy, Lucknow; Hygia Institute of Pharmacy/Central Institute of Pharmacy, Lucknow; Lucknow Institute of Management and Education, Lucknow and Gyanwati Inter College, Terwa, Madhoganj, Hardoi are under the scanner and are said to have been a part of this scam.
The scholarship scam runs into crores, 75 crores till now and maybe more will be discovered. These scams are not only worrisome because of the loopholes in the system, but also because they take away the right of the deserving people. The motive of the scholarship is to help people from disadvantaged communities however the greed of the privileged section deprives them of this right as well.
