New Delhi:
A case has been filed in connection with the alleged minority scholarship scams, which benefited 830 ‘bogus’ institutions, causing the Ministry of Minority Affairs to lose around Rs 144 crore during 2017-2022, officials said on Tuesday.
The FIR has been filed against unidentified individuals from banks, institutions and others under IPC sections of criminal conspiracy, deception, counterfeiting and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act, they said.
“In view of the various reports received regarding misappropriation of funds under the scholarship programs, the Ministry has engaged the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) to conduct the third-party evaluation of the scholarship programs. In addition, the Ministry has also an evaluation conducted through the National Scholarship Portal (NSP) by generating red flags for questionable institutions/applicants,” the ministry said in its complaint, which has now become part of the FIR.
It states that a total of 1,572 institutes have been identified for evaluation based on alerts generated on NSP. “Out of 1,572 institutions from 21 states, 830 are non-operational, bogus or partially bogus,” the report said.
The ministry has estimated the loss to the treasury by counting the financial implications for the year 2017-2018 to 2021-22 for the institutes identified as bogus and has identified a loss of Rs 144.33 crore to the treasury against these 830 institutions, the ministry said. .
The ministry said it was able to detect the loss before digitized data on NSP was available and that the scam would have occurred well before 2017-2018.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
