A recent investigation has found that the money meant for poor students under the Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme in Jharkhand has been siphoned off and is not reaching the students.
Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme is a centrally funded scholarship scheme which is meant to support students of minority communities: Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains and Buddhists from families with annual income below Rs 1 lakh. The eligibity for this is a minimum of 50% marks. The students in class 1 to 5 receive Rs 1,000 per year and students of class 6 to 10 receive Rs 10,700 if a hosteller or Rs 5,700 if a day scholar.
But after investigation the truth came out, a number of people were benefitting from the money. Middlemen, school-owners, banking correspondents and government officials in connivance with each other siphon most of the scholarship money.
Middlemen, in connivance with bank staff, open accounts of students and the Aadhar-enabled transaction is done through their fingerprints. The loop hole here is, the students don’t even come to know about the actual amount they received in their accounts. They are just handed over a very small sum in cash.
To check with these scams, the government is planning to bring a single national scholarship scheme by merging all the current scholarship schemes. The move came after a multi-crore scam was reported in the Post-Matric Scholarship Scheme for Scheduled Castes (SC) in Punjab in August 2020.
