Srinagar, May 26. The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) Jammu has registered a formal case against several individuals, including a retired senior government official, for their alleged involvement in a large-scale misappropriation of government funds under the Post Matric Scholarship (PMS) scheme for Scheduled Tribe (ST) students.
The case names former Director of Tribal Affairs, J&K, M.S. Choudhary (now retired), along with Shanaz Akhtar Malik of Catalog Computers (Auqaf Complex, Jammu), Humera Banu and Firdous Ahmed of Chirag Institute of IT (Channi Himmat), Sham Lal Targotra of JKS-Industrial Training Institute (Jinder Mehlu, R.S. Pura), Jaffer Hussain Wani of Evergreen Institute of Computer Technology (Shastri Nagar), Parshotam Bharadwaj of Global Institute of IT (Janipur), Smt. Ramneek Kour of Pankaj Memorial Charitable Trust (Rajpura Subash Nagar), Puneet Mahajan of Supertech (India) Computer Education (Talab Tillo), and others.
According to the ACB, preliminary verification revealed serious violations of government guidelines between 2014 and 2018, during which crores of rupees were released to unrecognized private institutions for unapproved computer courses under the PMS scheme. The scheme, funded by the Government of India, was intended to support ST students at the post-matric and post-secondary levels by reimbursing tuition fees (Rs 18,000 per student) and providing maintenance allowances (Rs 2,300).
However, it was found that several private institutions based in Jammu fraudulently obtained student documentsβmostly from remote tribal areasβand submitted them to the Directorate of Tribal Affairs. The concerned department officials allegedly failed to verify the authenticity of the institutions, their course content, infrastructure, or even whether the students had genuinely enrolled or attended the courses.
In many cases, students in whose names the scholarships were claimed had either never enrolled or had only partially attended the courses. Despite this, the full scholarship amounts were transferred directly to the bank accounts of these institutions. In some instances, fake bank accounts were reportedly created in the names of ST students without their consent, solely to divert the maintenance allowance.
Further discrepancies were uncovered, including the release of funds to institutions lacking valid accreditation from the National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology (NIELIT), a prerequisite under the scheme.
The ACB said that officials of the Directorate of Tribal Affairs, in criminal conspiracy with the institute owners and other beneficiaries, manipulated records and bypassed mandatory checks to siphon off government funds. The scam resulted in substantial financial losses to the state exchequer.
The ACB said that an investigation into the case is underway. [KNT]
