Institutes misused Aadhaar to claim SC scholarships: CAG

Punjab Economy

An audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has blown the lid off a scam in the disbursement of SC post-matric scholarships by misusing Aadhaar cards of students.
The CAG analysed 6,29,668 scholarship claims made by educational institutions in Bathinda, Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Moga, Patiala and Muktsar.
It found that the Aadhaar cards of 3,275 students were used multiple times to claim scholarship amount of Rs 15.63 crore.The claims were made by the institutions between 2015 and 2017.

Background :

Punjab is one of the five states where the performance audit of the SC scholarship scheme was carried out by the CAG for the period from April 2012 to March 2017.
Punjab, incidentally, has the highest percentage of SC population of over 32%.According to Census 2011, the state had 88.60 lakh SCs
In may this year Centre has decided to revise guidelines to fund post matric scholarship scheme for scheduled caste (SC) students.
Centre has announced that the state will have to fend for itself for any amount below Rs 750 spent on the scheme.
There are 2.90 lakh students availing the scheme in the stat e it would become virtually impossible for Punjab to foot the bill to keep scheme going.Earlier the state liability was Rs 60 cr only.
The Centre has to clear the pending amount for 2015-16 and funds for the next two financial year are yet to be released. The private colleges have already started refusing admission to SC students.
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has alleged that the state government ordered an untimely audit to misuse post-matric scholarship grant by private colleges.
The Congress government had on June 16 last year ordered special audit of 3,606 colleges and technical institutes claiming post-matric scholarship scheme for SCs from 2011-12 to 2016-17.
Due to the audit process the state government had stopped the release of the post-matric scholarship amount to colleges.

Analysis :

The CAG has pointed out lack of input validation control in the application software to reject more than one entry from the same student in the same academic year and course, resulting in repeated disbursement of scholarships.
The revised guidelines will defeat the very objective of the scholarship scheme for SCs and would only serve to put students in a highly disadvantaged position, besides imposing an unmanageable financial burden on the government.
Taking defaulting colleges to task for embezzlement of post-matric scholarship amount of SCs and OBCs students, Punjab government has a proposal to recover Rs 372.80 crore misappropriated amount from them, along with 9% interest.
Punjab Government has to take strict action against colleges found defaulting in the audit during the budget session.
The state Government should release the scholarship money at least to those colleges who were found adhering to rules in the audit.
The central government is yet to release its share of the scheme amounting to Rs 1,615 crore to the state government, failing it would put three lakh students in Punjab in lurch.