Chandigarh: The AAP government has sacked six officials found guilty in the probe into the Rs 39 crore post-matric scholarship scam for Scheduled Castes.
Of these, four officers belong to the Social Justice, Empowerment and Minorities Affairs Department and two to the Finance Department.
The dismissed officers include Parminder Singh Gill Deputy Director; Charanjit Singh Deputy Controller; Mukesh Bhatia Section Officer; Rajinder Chopra is the superintendent and Rakesh Arora and Baldev Singh (both senior assistants).
Of these, Charanjit and Rakesh have retired. The order regarding their dismissal has been issued by the minister of the concerned department, Dr. Baljit Kaur.
Sadhu Singh Dharamsot was in charge of social justice, empowerment and minorities departments in the Captain Amarinder Singh-led Congress government and it was during his tenure that the scholarship scam was unearthed.
A departmental inquiry conducted by the AAP government has revealed that while distributing scholarships to SC students, the then chief minister’s guidelines were ignored and some private institutions were given undue benefits.
Instead of taking action against these institutions, crores of rupees were benefited. Instead of taking necessary approvals from the Finance Department for re-audit of these 14 institutions, the above officials included the names of some other institutions in the list to give undue benefit.
An amount of Rs 16.91 crore was released to nine institutions without the approval of the finance department.