Daily Pioneer: Lucknow: Wednesday,
June 15, 2016.
Western UP
towns have been hit by siphoning of government funds meant for scholarships and
other help to poor and outstanding students. This shocking facts surfaced
during appeals made under Right to Information (RTI) Act.
Confirming
this on Tuesday, State Information Commissioner (SIC) Hafiz Usman said that
appeals which came up before him pointed towards several college managements
were engaged in siphoning of government funds meant for needy students.
Referring to
Niscom Academy College in Janakpuri (Saharanpur) the SIC said that the college
forged documents showing scholarship given to 111 students. A subsequent probe
revealed that none of students who were diusbursed scholarship, were studying
in the college. Authorised to run a secondary school, the college was also found to be running an
Intermediate college.
What is more,
at least six more schools in Saharanpur were found to be (mal)functioning on
similar lines. Despite knowing these murky facts, officers of the Education
Department forgot to initiate proceedings against these erring colleges.
After
learning of the facts, the SIC got a criminal case registered against the
college managements and also asked DM of Saharanpur to cancel their
registration. In yet another brazen
example at Bijnore, ex-Principal of a primary school in Jahengir hamlet, Shashibala gave scholarship to her son for
several years projecting him as a student of her school. She forged the college
records to accomodate her son but did not mention her name in the column for
mother's name and instead put a fictitious `Madhu’ to escape legalities.
The woman
principal siphoned off scholarship funds for several years before her move was
exposed through an RTI after she was transferred from the school.
The SIC has
now asked DM of Bijnore to stop all service benefits to Shashibala and to
recover the entire amount of scholarship by deducting it from her salary.
Besides,
there have been large scale irregularities in scholarship to students and in
Mid-day Meal Scheme in Bijnore. A Primary School in Kulhedi with 100 students
swindled funds showing 300 to 400 students enrolled in the college thereby
scooped up funds worngfully to the tunes of several lakh rupees.
In another
case in Bijnore, a private school New Heaven Inter College (Noorpur) was found
to be making money from students for forwarding their names for getting CM’s
ambitious scheme of facilitating monetary help to girls under `Kanya
Vidyadhan’. The authorities collected a cut of Rs 10,000 out of the total Rs
30,000 given under the scheme. Ironically,
despite knowing about the mala fide, the
senior officials of Education department took no interest to cancel recognition
of the school even after recommendation by district authorities.
Besides, an
organised racket of siphoning funds through Madarsas, existing on papers only,
have also surfaced in Moradabad. A probe revealed that while several madarsas
were running on papers, the buildings of some madarsas were found to be
'absent' in Moradabad. Despite this, the
Minority Welfare department kept on issuing huge grants in the name of
education and scholarships to Muslim children. In one case, fouyr madarsas were founf to be running from
a single plot as per the papers.
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