The Union Ministry of Minority Affairs has begun the process of re-verification of institutes and beneficiaries of various scholarships for minority students after discrepancies were found during verification of applications for these scholarships, Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani informed Parliament on Thursday. Irani said the Centre assigned the task of ‘Monitoring and Evaluation of Central Government Minority Scholarship Scheme’ to the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) after “irregularities” were noticed. “The ministry has taken action for re-verification of applicants in a transparent manner to weed out irregularities,” Irani stated in her written reply to Rajya Sabha. The Indian Express had investigated illegal siphoning of Centrally funded pre-matric scholarship meant for minority students from economically poor background by an alleged nexus of middlemen, bank correspondents, officials and school staff. The Centre handed over the probe to CBI in November 2020. In her reply, Irani said the ministry has specifically implemented various schemes, including pre-matric, post-matric and merit-cum-means scholarship schemes, across the country for socioeconomic and educational empowerment of six notified minority communities. Replying to Congress MP Shashi Tharoor's question on minority scholarships, Irani stated that the number of verified applications received under the pre-matric, post-matric, merit-cum-means scholarship scheme and Begum Hazrat Mahal National Scholarship for 2022-23 academic year was 26,13,521. Of this, she stated, 17,08,471 were fresh applications and 9,05,050 were renewals.
