250 senior officials of the social justice department have been issued showcase notice in a multi-crore scholarship scam to the tune of Rs. 1,882 crore in Maharashtra. The notice was issued by SIT. The scam took place from the academic year 2009 to 2015-16 academic years. It is also alleged that a number of educational institutions across state collected excessive scholarship amount showing bogus students. A SIT was formed by then commissioner of police of Nagpur Dr. K Venkatesham, IAS officers Piyush Singh and Ranjith Kumar Deol. The SIT report stated that a huge sum of Rs 1,882 crore was overpaid to educational institutions and could be recovered.
However, the SIT’s findings were challenged in court by educational institutions.117 crore 85 lakh rupees from this scam was recovered from educational institutions. However, recovery of Rs 60 crore is yet to be done, documents are not available. Now show cause notices were issued to 250 officials regarding this amount and they were asked to submit the documents within 15 days. Claiming that the SIT said the scam was worth Rs 2100 crore, the organization Students Helping Hand in Pune filed a public interest litigation in the court, questioning why the state government did not take immediate steps to recover this amount. The Leavement of Social Justice took immediate action. Our fight will continue, said Adv. Kuldeep Ambekar.