Lucknow. Recently there was news that a big scam has taken place in many states of the country in the matter of giving scholarships to minority students. Now this information has come to light that even in UP, after the decision of biometric verification, 27 percent minority students are missing. The Union Ministry of Minority Welfare had ordered the verification of biometrics of Aadhaar cards of these minority students for reimbursement of scholarship and fees. According to Hindi newspaper Amar Ujala, after the order for biometric testing, around one lakh minority students are not found in Sitapur, Kushinagar, Basti, Sant Kabirnagar, Moradabad and Bijnor. After this information came to light, the Yogi Adityanath government of Uttar Pradesh is now going to investigate the scholarship given to minority students on a large scale. Yogi government had already got the illegal madrassas investigated. Recently, the UP government has also constituted SIT to investigate foreign funding to illegal madrassas.
According to newspaper news, scholarship and fees for minority students are reimbursed by the government. For this, 359659 minority students had applied in UP. When the order for their biometric testing was made, 97463 of the students who had applied did not appear. According to the news, 12161 minority students who applied for scholarship in Moradabad are not known. At the same time, the whereabouts of 6738 minority students in Bijnor, 4228 in Farrukhabad, 5630 in Kushinagar, 3726 in Basti, 4073 in Sitapur, 3339 in Sant Kabirnagar, 4416 in Gonda is not known. According to the newspaper, many students are unaccounted for in Rampur, Sambhal, Amroha, Meerut, Auraiya, Aligarh, Saharanpur, Unnao, Aligarh and Ambedkar Nagar. According to the information, about 4700 applications are still pending with the institute and nodal officer for biometric verification of minority students. October 27 is the last date for sending applications.
The Union Ministry of Minority Welfare had ordered biometric verification of those applying for scholarship and reimbursement of fees of minority students in the year 2022-23. The ministry had received complaints of irregularities in this scheme. All states were asked for biometric verification. The Minority Welfare Ministry is currently with Smriti Irani. He had decided that the funds would be given to the students only after biometric verification. The Ministry has recently handed over the investigation of the scam in this matter to the CBI.