New Delhi: Opposition BJP today alleged a "big racket" in disbursement of post-matriculation scholarships to SC/ST students pursuing technical education in professional institutions and demanded a high level probe into it.
Senior BJP leader Sushil Modi also questioned Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's silence on the issue.
"We demand that the state government should make public the names of students and payments made to different professional institutions in the country under the programme in the last five years," he told reporters.
A "large amount" has been paid by the state government to three professional colleges located in little known Chandaus in Aligarh district whose existence are doubtful, he alleged.
The money was paid in the name of 404 students in three colleges - Raja Ramchandra Institute of Technology and Management, Dulari Devi Institute of Pharmacy and NCR Technical Campus, all located at Chandaus village, about 20 km from Aligarh.
A person named Nirbhay Singh is the secretary of all the three professional colleges, Sushil said on the sidelines of 'Janata Darbar' at his official residence.
"I asked some people in Aligarh to visit these professional colleges and check the whereabouts of the dalit students of Bihar studying there. To my surprise, they told me yesterday that the three colleges do not exist anymore," he said.
Alleging wrong doing by SC&ST department in disbursement of post matric scholarship, for which the Bihar government pays the fees as well as for boarding and lodging of dalit students from the state, Sushil said, surprisingly the Principal Secretary to the department had ordered to make payments to the three colleges on January 17, the very day he received the communication requesting it.
Sushil had earlier raised the issue of non-payment of scholarship money to 60 SC/ST students at Rajdhani College in Bhubaneshwar which threatened to terminate their study mid-course.
