Govt leaving out 85% colleges in scholarship scam probe

Nagpur: It seems the Maharashtra government is not interested in investigating further the multi-crore scholarship scam, in spite of repeated strictures from Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court. An indication in this regard was given by Social Justice and Special Assistance Department secretary Dinesh Waghmare, who told TOI there was no need to inspect all 26,000 colleges in state, as most of them were covered by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) in its probe.
The SIT, however, only inspected 15% colleges or, more specifically, only their audit reports without actually visiting them, following directives from the judiciary. “When SIT was probing the misappropriation, it had sought records and audit reports from assistant commissioner of our department in various cities. They have given records of all educational institutes under their jurisdiction,” Waghmare said.

Officials associated with SIT contested this claim stating they had just inspected records of 15% institutions, which came to 1,704 colleges, from where they arrived at a figure of Rs2,174 crore being siphoned off. “There are over 26,000 colleges that availed scholarship amount. What we inspected is just a tip of the iceberg. We had clearly mentioned in our report that we hadn’t physically verified the colleges due to restrictions imposed by HC. We could have unearthed more serious irregularities,” they told TOI.

Pune-based social welfare commissioner Milind Shambharkar didn’t react to TOI’s numerous calls and SMS for his comments on department’s affidavit in the HC which pegged the scam amount at Rs1,868.09 crore, of which they had recovered just Rs91.34 crore.

Defending government on reducing the misappropriation amount to Rs977.24 crore, Waghmare stated SIT had not only inflated the amount, but also made double entries at many places. “Officers from our department then physically inspected all colleges and verified the audits reports where many discrepancies were found. Out of Rs977.24 crore, about Rs700.83 crore were adjusted towards advance taken by the colleges. This factor was not taken into account by the SIT,” he said.

He added their department had started recovery even before SIT’s formation and only Rs185.26 crore were to be recovered. “It is not true that we were not taking action against erring colleges. We have asked the officers to lodged police complaints wherever they found large scale misappropriation. There is still confusion regarding nursing courses along with short terms ones conducted by the MSBTE on whether they are eligible for availing scholarship. Without clarity on these, we can’t act against the colleges,” he said.