In a huge scholarship scam, it has emerged that a central school located at Nazira in upper Assam’s Sivasagar district has been shown as the school of Bihar and is listed under six districts of the state.
Data on the National Scholarship Portal (NSP), for the Centre’s pre-Matric scholarships for poor minority students, show that Kendriya Vidyalaya Nazira is listed under six districts of Bihar, Indian Express reported.
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According to the newspaper, at least 39 beneficiaries have been selected across Bihar under the name of Kendriya Vidyalaya Nazira.
The principal of Kendriya Vidyalaya Nazira, Akhileshwar Jha said that all the beneficiaries of the scholarship are bogus.
For Kendriya Vidyalaya Nazira, records for 2019-20 show scholarship beneficiaries in Darbhanga (14), Muzaffarpur (13), Madhubani (7), Purnea (2), Bhagalpur (2) and East Champaran (1).
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“Our teachers have checked this list and these names cannot be found in our register. We will raise this at the highest level. We did not verify any of these scholarship forms last year,” Indian Express quoted Jha as saying.
Jha said during this year’s verification process also the school received a mail from the Assam District Welfare Officer.
“Many applicants were registered as our students for 2020-21. When we checked, they were not our students although the entries mentioned our school and the contact person listed was our computer teacher. This needs to be investigated,” he said.
Scholarship records for the school show that a Class 8 beneficiary and Muzaffarpur resident, Hasina Begum, received Rs 10,700.
According to records of Bihar’s welfare department, which is the verification authority in this case, Begum’s address is “Kurhani, Muzaffarpur” and the pin code 834551 — this pin code does not exist; Kurhani’s code is 844120.
Officials in Bihar said inter-state applications are rare at the pre-Matric stage as they are mostly done by students who leave their homes to study in another state.
In such cases, they said, the verification is done by the district minority welfare officer in the applicant’s domicile state.
“But in the case of this Kendriya Vidyalaya, if the principal says those listed are not their students, it is very alarming,” Rizwan Ahmad, District Minority Welfare Officer, Darbhanga, said.
“This year, I rejected many applications that listed the school as KV Nazira. The forms claimed the applicants were residents of Darbhanga but the entries were blurred. The copies of bank passbooks, too, had no substantial balance or record. Only the IFSC code was visible. In one passbook, I zoomed in to check the address and it was North Dinajpur in West Bengal,” he said.
In Muzaffarpur 13 students from KV Nazira are mentioned as beneficiaries for 2019-20.
The Centre’s pre-Matric scholarships are meant for minority students from families with an annual income of less than Rs 1 lakh and who scored at least 50 per cent in their class exam.