Shimla, Oct 18 (IANS) The Himachal Pradesh High Court on Friday issued notice to the state’s Director of Higher Education and the CBI in the illegal disbursement of post-matric scholarship and directed them to file the status report and reply within two weeks.
A Division Bench comprising the Chief Justice L. Narayana Swamy and Justice Dharam Chand Chaudhary passed the orders on a writ petition filed by Shyam Lal.
He has alleged that Shakti Bhushan, State Project Officer, was appointed by the state government to inquire into the misappropriation of the scholarships under the Centrally-sponsored Post Matric Scholarships Scheme for students belonging to the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Communities.
On the basis of an inquiry, a first information report was registered on November 10, 2018.
The inquiry said a huge sum of scholarship money was misappropriated. Apart from educational institutions within the state, scores of other educational institutions in other states were also involved in this “scam”.
Consequently, the matter was handed over to the CBI for investigation by the state.
The petitioner said he was concerned with the approach of the CBI as it was not investigating all the erring institutions.
It was investigating only 22 out of 2,772 institutions that were named in the preliminary investigation report of Bhushan.
The petitioner has sought directions to the Central Bureau of investigation to investigate all institutions named by Bhushan.
The court listed the matter for next hearing on November 14.
–IANS
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