By Sushil Kutty
It is the “biggest minority scholarship scam” unearthed, which puts it directly in the lap of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeasement policy, what the Prime Minister called ‘tushtikaran” in his Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort, one of three ills plaguing the nation, he said; the other two being corruption and family rule. Fact is, the Modi government has pumped in hundreds of crores of rupees into welfare schemes earmarked for minorities with Muslims easily the overwhelming favourites.
And now, it has been found that in one case of appeasement, much of the money has been siphoned away and the Union Minister for Minority Affairs Smriti Irani has “escalated” the case to the CBI. Clearly, the Modi government wants to take credit for unearthing corruption in an election year with the general elections round the corner. The Modi government cannot escape culpability for the minority scholarship scam with the excuse that the scam was unearthed during its watch. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani have a lot to explain.
The problem is the scam involves mostly ‘madrasas’ and if there is anybody more accommodative of the Pasmanda Muslims, it is Prime Minister Narendra Modi under whose watch more than 300 welfare schemes for the Pasmanda Muslims have been launched. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is very serious about lifting impoverished Pasmanda Muslims out of poverty and he does not care who gets miffed in the process.
The Ministry of Minority Affairs knows the Sachar Committee Report by heart and ensuring that the Pasmandas got first right on national resources is an article of faith with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. More to the point, PM Modi’s “Pasmanda policy” couldn’t have taken a bigger hit than with this minority scholarship scam. Not just scholarships, 53 percent of institutions involved were also “fake”. In other words, the Modi dispensation was made a total fool of by the scamsters and now the man who coined the slogan ‘Na Khaunga Na Khaane Doonga’ has been made to eat crow.
So much so, Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani has asked the caged parrot to investigate. The credit will fall in Irani’s lap when actually the Ministry for Minority Affairs should be in the dock. There is also an attempt being made to put the blame for the scam on the previous UPA government as the origins of the scholarships have been traced to academic year 2007-08, when so-called “Muslim appeaser” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was at the helm.
The scam was pretty simple: The government established a series of scholarships for minorities, ranging from those earmarked for students of Class 1 to those in Ph.D. When the scam broke, it was found that 53 percent of beneficiary institutions which took hold of the scholarships were fake. As of now, the scam involves Rs 144.83-crore in damages over a period of 5 years. The CBI probe will unravel the details. The size of the scam could bloat beyond recognition.
The scam escalated after the Modi government took over and an internal probe found the involvement of 830 institutions. The probe began July 10 and involves 100 districts. As many as 830 institutions in 21 states were found to be fraudulently involved.
The Minority Scholarship Programme covers 180000 institutions. Launched in 2007-2008, the bulk of the money has been going to fake beneficiaries. Whether actual students got the largesse or not is part of the probe. The money went to whom is also subject of inquiry.
The 2014 Modi government failed to detect the scam. Now, don’t be surprised if the credit for exposing the scam becomes a feather in the cap of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Adding feathers to Prime Minister Modi’s cap is a scam in itself. For the time being the functioning of nodal officers of the scholarship scheme, district nodal officers and the role of multiple states are in the scanner.
The involvements of banks and other financial institutions are also being probed. That the Modi government was completely unaware should also be investigated. Many of the institutions were registered with both the National Scholarship Portal and the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE). The involved crooks were way ahead of the minority appeasers. In his zeal for “appeasement”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was clearly not doing what he preached.
The states involved included Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Assam, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. In Malappuram, Kerala, one bank branch distributed 66,000 scholarships, more than the number of minority students eligible for scholarships in its jurisdiction. In another instance, the telephone number of a parent was linked with 22 scholarships awarded to 22 students of the same class IX in the same school. And in yet another institution, every student claimed a hostel scholarship when there was nothing called a hostel in the school. Clearly, the Modi government has loads of money to give away to scamsters – ‘Na Khaunga, Na Khaane Doonga’. PM Modi is not an example of ‘family rule’, nor does ‘corruption’ figure in his resume, but when it comes to ‘tushtikaran’ nobody beats him in the game of appeasement. (IPA Service)
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