Punjab’s Social Justice, Empowerment and Minority Minister Sadhu Singh Dharamsot on Thursday termed the sit-in staged by Shiromani Akali Dal a cheap political stunt to capture media’s attention.
“The same party, in whose regime administrative discrepancies have been committed in the post matric scholarship, is now posing themselves as the sympathiser of dalits,” said Dharamsot.
He said that the Congress Government has decided to conduct audit of the amount released in the name of scholarship by the SAD-BJP Government in order to bring forth the bungling committed by them, and “in the audit of amount released by the private educational institutes, up till now amount of Rs 460 crore has been found objectionable”.
Refuting SAD’s allegations of not releasing scholarship amount, Dharamsot said that in reality, the Congress Government has released Rs 203 crore under the Post Matric Scholarship in the past two years. Dharamsot said that the Post Matric Scholarship of Rs 1,663.47 crore is pending with the Centre for 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19 that is Rs 719.52 crore for 2016-17, Rs 567.55 crore for 2017-18, and Rs 376.40 crore for 2018-19.
“The Central Government has released Rs 327.39 crore in 2018-19 which is due for the financial year 2015-16,” he added.
The Minister further added that there are 3606 educational institutes in Punjab, out of these, audit report of 2,059 — including 1,898 private and 161 Government — educational institutes have been received so far.
“Out of 1,898 private educations institutes, scholarship amount to 920 institutes cannot be disbursed as the audit reports of these institutes is shady. Scholarship amount of Rs 88 crore to the remaining 978 education institutes has already been released. The Government has also sanctioned Rs 171 crore for 302 technical institutes and the bills to release the payment are being deposit in the treasury soon,” he detailed.
Further the Minister added that the Centre has released Rs 115.73 crore for 2017-18, meant for Post Matric Scholarship of 3.94 lakh students, and was released to 2000 Government and private institutes, the report of which has already been submitted to the Centre.
Taking on the SAD-BJP, the Minister said that Akali leaders have no right to stage demonstrations as the pending amount of their tenure 2014-15, 2015-16, 2016-17 has been released by the Congress Government.
He also made it clear that the instructions for transactions with regard to the fees are issued by the Central Government and the State Government and various educational institutions have to work in accordance with that.
