The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has exposed gaping holes in student scholarship schemes and thrown up serious posers about the direct benefit transfer mechanism in Odisha. The performance audit report, which was placed before the state assembly’s last session, examined the post matric scholarship (PMS) and Medhabruti schemes; the former is jointly sponsored by the Centre and the Odisha government, while the latter is entirely state-funded. The auditor detected large-scale discrepancies in beneficiary coverage, institutional framework, fund diversion and ineligible institutions eating up financial support meant for students belonging to socio-economically weaker sections. Sample this: between 2016 and 2020, at least 5,185 beneficiaries from 15 ineligible institutions were sanctioned PMS amounting to Rs 15.79 crore. In another instance, an institute applied for and availed of scholarships for students who had long discontinued their studies; it not only managed to receive Rs 2.36 crore in the bank accounts of the beneficiaries, but also got it transferred to its own account.
Several states are on their toes after the Union minority affairs ministry found massive frauds in its minority scholarship programmes. But the CAG report is disconcerting for the Odisha government in particular because it has blown the lid off the poor use of direct benefit transfers in the two schemes. Out of the 3,12,823 bank accounts of PMS beneficiaries, the audit found that a substantial 77 percent were not seeded with Aadhaar details. The state advisory committee on direct transfers did not have any representation of the National Payment Corporation of India; its web service to identify the latest Aadhaar-seeded bank accounts was not even used, leading to the leakage of crores of rupees. With poor synchronisation of data among two administrative departments, no one seemed to notice that the number of beneficiaries had dipped from 5.51 lakh in 2017-18 to 4.47 lakh in 2020-21.
The mismanagement and impropriety invited interventions of officials at various levels, thereby defeating the primary objective of direct benefit transfers to remove intermediaries. The two schemes help shape the academic dreams and lives of lakhs of students—primarily drawn from the scheduled tribes and castes, and other backward classes. No deserving beneficiary should be left out because of poor management. The Odisha government must not only fix the faults immediately, but also hold accountable those responsible for this mess.