The Jharkhand government has suspended a key district welfare official in Dhanbad for not following due process and accepting applications without verification for the Centre’s pre-Matric scholarships for poor minority students, according to the Indian Express.
The order placing Dhanbad District Welfare Officer Dayanand Dubey under suspension said that the suspension was “with immediate effect for not following due process in conducting any inquiry resulting in illegal disbursement of the scholarship amount”.
This step was taken after the state government initiated a probe into the illegal diversion of the scholarship funds, by a nexus of government, bank and school officials. The Jharkhand State Co-operative Bank has also frozen the accounts of two banking correspondents in the capital city of Ranchi for their alleged involvement in the scam, reported the Indian Express.
An FIR was registered in Dhanbad in November last year that accused a computer operator at the District Welfare Office of allegedly registering schools on the National Scholarship Portal (NSP) for the scholarship without Dayanand Dubey’s signature.
The inquiry into this corruption web was first launched on the basis of Indian Express reports that found that the nexus colluded to dupe parents and students, and set up fake beneficiaries, while genuine applicants were left out across various districts- Ranchi, Latehar, Ramgarh, Lohardaga and Sahibganj and Dhanbad.
Speaking to the media, the ADM Dhanbad had revealed that the accused persons siphoned off the funds in three ways. In the first method they enrolled fake students by obtaining the User ID’s and passwords by taking school principals or school nodal officers for the scholarship into confidence and got the money transferred into their accounts. In the second method, they got fake user ID’s and passwords on the basis of forged documents into the NSP, without the knowledge of the schools and in connivance of the welfare department officials, and siphoned off the money. In the third method, they got scholarship funds, transferred from the welfare department of Dhanbad in the name of schools located outside Dhanbad.
Advocate Shadab had also apprised SabrangIndia last year that this scam was spread in almost all parts of India but had been reported first in Jharkhand. An inkling of this fraud first emerged when students of different schools in Jharkhand were being asked to furnish various documents like bank account details, Aadhar, etc. He added that everyone from the top level officials in the Government to low ranked officers in Banks and State departments were involved.
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