According to reports, a fraudulent gang is active in the state, which looks for the needy people of the minority community then take their Aadhaar card and bank account information in the name of getting help from Saudi Arabia.
What is this pre-matric scholarship scam?
The Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme is meant to help students of minority communities like Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains and Buddhists from families with annual income below Rs 1 lakh. To be eligible, students need to score at least 50 percent in their class exams. The scholarship is given in two tiers every year: students in class 1 to 5 receive Rs 1,000 per year and students of class 6 to 10 receive Rs 10,700 if a hosteller or Rs 5,700 if a day scholar. However, middlemen, school-owners, banking correspondents and government officials in connivance with each other took most of the scholarship money. Although the amount is small, the scale of it is what matters.
Is the money siphoned from students only?
No. There are fake students, older people who too receive the amount. The narrative is that the money is coming from Saudi Arabia. The deal is to give half the money to the middlemen.
Fake game started with Faizul raja madrasa
The fraudulent game started first in the scholarship from Faizul Raza Madrasa located in Dulmi, Ramgarh. Middlemen have also included many such people, who are uncles and aunts and grandfathers since ages. Anjuman committee gave an application to Ramgarh DC. Suresh Chaudhary, BEEO of Dulmi and Alok Mitra, welfare officer investigated it. It was found that the madrasa has been closed for a year and a half. Later the investigation scam was detected in Lohardaga, Dhanbad and other districts.
How much money is disbursed by the Minority Affairs Ministry to Jharkhand?
In 2019-20, the Ministry of Minority Affairs said that it disbursed Rs 61 crore to Jharkhand under the pre-matric scholarship scheme. Around 203,628 ‘students’ applied and 84,133 ‘students’ got the scholarship, as per the Ministry’s data. In 2018-19: Jharkhand received Rs 34.61 crore and 166,423 students applied, only 50,466 students got the scholarship. In India, for the academic year 2019-20, Rs 1423.89 crore was disbursed for Pre-Matric Scholarship.
