Investigate swindling of scholarship fund: AMDB

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: Claiming that there has been swindling of huge scholarship funds which were meant for students belonging to the minority community, the Assam Minorities Development Board (AMDB) made an appeal to the Chief Minister to constitute an investigative team to find out the culprits.

Addressing a press conference on Monday, AMDB chairman Syed Muminul Aowal claimed that over Rs 500 crore has been released in the last four years to provide scholarship to minority students and a maximum part of this amount has been swindled.

Aowal alleged that starting from the school headmaster, the bank officials, brokers and even a section of district nodal officers are directly indulged with this scam of misappropriation of scholarship funds. He said that at the very outset, the scam starts with the school headmasters who enroll fake students for the scholarship.

Stating reasons in response to the allegation, he said the Central government sends verification code to the phone numbers belonging to the applicant only after the completion of verification by head masters, bank and district nodal officers. The entire procedure is very systematic that the students must get their scholarship without any anomalies, yet some are engaged in swindling of the fund. The scam is happening because of those headmasters who enroll fake students, brokers who creates sim cards against the fake applicants, bank officials that verifies the accounts against the fake applicants and finally the district nodal officers approves the fake applicants.

"It's time that people should be aware of the scam. The central government has released a total of Rs. 501,40,4476 between the year 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20 for merit-cum-means, post matric and pre matric scholarship. It's an appeal to every conscious citizen to inform AMDB if they come to know about such misappropriation of scholarship funds. We urge the government to ensure punishment for the culprits engaged in this scam by bringing them under the judicial system," Aowal added.

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