Minority student scholarship scam: Complaint says Rs 1.3 crore claimed in Karnataka | Bengaluru News

Bengaluru: The minority student scholarship scam, being investigated by CBI, has a Karnataka connection too. According to the district officer of the minority welfare department, over Rs 1.3 crore of fraudulent scholarship was claimed in the state between 2021 and 2023.Central CEN Crime police have initiated a probe into the scam. Bengaluru Urban district officer Pradeep Simha M, in his complaint to police Saturday, stated that 643 students were granted the scholarship despite not being eligible, and the money was fraudulently claimed by nodal officers and students.Hundreds of private colleges, their nodal officers, and students who availed themselves of the scholarship are under scrutiny. The nodal officers allegedly enrolled students from classes 10-12 for the scholarship scheme, despite them not meeting the criteria such as a minimum of 50% marks. False data of the students was uploaded to the national scholarship portal scholarships.gov.in.Simha told TOI that the data of the institutions and students who fraudulently availed themselves of the scholarship was received by the central govt.A senior officer supervising the investigation said the probe is in the preliminary stage. “We have asked the complainant to provide us with more details. The list of institutions has been given to us, and we are going to serve notices to the institutions’ principals, nodal officers, and students at the earliest.”A case has been registered under sections 66C (punishment for identity theft) and 66D (punishment for cheating by personation by using computer resources) of the Information Technology Act.