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1,100 students got scholarship fraudulently:CBI probe into ₹250-cr scam in Himachal
In September 2019, the state cabinet recommended a CBI inquiry into the alleged scam in the disbursal of scholarships under state and centrally-sponsored schemes for reserved category students in Himachal
Shimla The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is on the trail of a ₹250-crore scholarship scam in which this amount, meant for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (SC & ST) students under Central and state schemes, was actually disbursed through fake admissions. In the latest, the central agency has put the number of students who benefited fraudulently at 1,100.
The scam was first unearthed last year following reports that students of government schools in the tribal Spiti valley in Lahaul and Spiti district had not been paid scholarship. In September 2019, the state cabinet under chairmanship of chief minister Jai Ram Thakur recommended a CBI inquiry into the alleged scam in the disbursal of scholarships under state and centrally-sponsored schemes for reserved category students in Himachal. The state education department also decided to conduct an internal probe.
“KC Group of Institutions, Nawanshahr, Punjab, embezzled ₹11 crore through 1,100 fake admissions,” a CBI source said, adding the agency visited remote locations in Himachal to verify addresses of students that purportedly studied at the Una campus of the KC Group, but found a false trail of information. During investigation, the CBI has found 1,200 students took admission in the institute from 2013-2017 and applied for scholarships; 1,100 were fake.
The CBI says that an analysis of documents and interrogation of the accused found out that the KC Group misappropriated funds in connivance with the officers of the Himachal education department and bank officials.
CBI sources told HT that the institute obtained documents of the students from a private computer centre and applied for the scholarship under various centrally-sponsored schemes. Most genuine students did not know that scholarship was being disbursed to them. The investigators are now trying to find out the amount the institution paid to obtain the documents of the students.
To date, 12 people have been booked in the case. The CBI had recently interrogated the main accused Arvind Rajta, the then superintendent in the Himachal education department, chairman of KC Group Hitesh Gandhi and a cashier at the Central Bank of India’s, Nawanshahr branch, at Kaithu Jail.
‘2.4 LAKH DENIED SCHOLARSHIP’
The Himachal education department’s inquiry revealed that around 2.4 lakh SC/ST students were deprived of scholarships under centrally-sponsored schemes. The inquiry also found that ineligible candidates were given admission and institutions opened fictitious bank accounts for payment of scholarships. The scam remained hidden as people who created an online portal for the disbursement of the scholarship scheme and those who actually transferred the amount were the same, the inquiry pointed out. The inquiry found the scholarships amounting to Rs 226 crore had been disbursed through fake admissions over the past few years. Sources said some fake accounts were traced to states as far away as Haryana, Chandigarh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
