Himachal Pradesh: FIR registered in Rs 201 crore scholarship scam

SHIMLA: Shimla police on Saturday registered an FIR in the Rs 210 crore Scholarship scam of Himachal Pradesh.
The case has been registered under the provisions of cheating, forgery, forgery of records and using forged documents as genuine against two prominent private educational institutions of Karnataka and Punjab. It has been alleged in the complaint that these institutes usurped scholarship of 250 students from Kangra district.
State Project Officer (SPM & NIU), Shakti Bhushan in his complaint alleged that Secretary (Education Department), Himachal Pradesh, had appointed him for the enquiry of allotment of scholarship and during the enquiry, he found that 250 students of Kangra district had taken admission in Fathepur and Vadukhar centres of two private universities of Karnataka and Punjab.
He said that at the time of filling of forms, the management of the universities declared to provide a scholarship to the students of SC/ST category, which had transferred to their Aadhaar-based linked account. But the above institutes had not given any kind of scholarship to the students and money was found deposited in another fake account opened by misusing the Aadhaar card of students instead of their actual accounts.
Based on his complaint a case FIT number 133/18 has been registered at Police Station Shimla East on under section 419 (cheating by personation), 465 (forgery), 466 (forgery of record of court or of public register) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document) of IPC.
During the previous regime, the state had witnessed multi-crore scam in the distribution of scholarships to SC/ST and OBC students. During the departmental probe, it had come to light that around 70 per cent institutions availing the scholarship benefits belonged from outside the state.
State government already has decided to hand over the probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and with police registering the FIR now the case would soon be handed over to CBI.
Chief minister Jai Ram Thakur led BJP government on August 21 this year had taken the decision to hand over the investigation of scholarship scam to CBI. This decision was taken after many irregularities came to light during the meeting held to review the scholarship distribution during the previous Congress regime.
It was found that some institutions unexpectedly had a large number of students enrolled and preliminary inquiry revealed that different institutions of state and centre were involved in this. A large number of institutions were located outside the state so the state government took the decision to conduct a detailed probe to bring out the truth.