Jaipur, Dec. 27 -- The Rajasthan government has issued the ministry of minority affairs's pre-matric and post-matric scholarships to several ineligible students without checking their income criteria, minimum marks, and other required documents, revealed the recent Comptroller and Auditor General of India's (CAG) report which was tabled in the Parliament on December 18. According to the data, the pre-matric benefit of the scheme was disbursed to at least 998 students without checking their income certificate while the corresponding certificate was not even issued by the competent authority for 372 such students. The figure was highest among all the 17 states where the CAG found a similar violation in the verification of the income certificates. Rajasthan was followed by 363 cases in Chhattisgarh, 301 in Puducherry, and 288 in Odisha. The corresponding figure for the post-matric scheme is 327 who did not enclose their certificate which is a key criteria for the scholarship, as per the report. The CAG team also flagged 15 such cases where the schemes at both pre-matric and post-matric level have been awarded despite not belonging to the specific income criteria provisioned by the ministry. "Systemic issues in implementation of both Pre-Matric and Post-Matric Scholarship Schemes for the students belonging to minority communities limited the effectiveness of the schemes. The implementation was marked by deviations from guidelines, including awarding scholarships to ineligible students, acceptance of applications with income certificates issued by non-competent authorities or without income certificates, and payments to non-enrolled school students. Further irregularities included disbursing Post-Matric scholarships to Pre-Matric students and excess payments beyond eligible limits," read the report. For the purpose of audit, relevant scheme data for the years 2017-18 to 2019-20 was obtained from the ministry and analysed by the CAG team following a field survey that was also conducted from 2017 to 2021 to verify the red flagged areas across 174 districts across states and union territories including the state of Rajasthan. Meanwhile, 12 students at the pre-matric level and another 79 at the post-matric level have also been found in Rajasthan who are not even enrolled in any school or any institute. Yet an expenditure of Rs.1.10 lakh and Rs.8.44 lakh were spent for this chunk. At least 109 students at the post-matric level have also been found who were paid an excess amount of Rs.1.21 lakh. A further classification of the data also highlighted that 345 pre-matric students' scholarship was renewed and Rs.8.18 lakh was spent despite them failing to obtain the minimum marks. Similarly, 41 such students at post-matric level were also found in Rajasthan by the CAG team for whom the ministry spent Rs.2.61 lakh. In this criteria, Rajasthan, at the pre-matric level, was only after Punjab with 1,289 cases, and was followed by Gujarat with 114 cases, and West Bengal with 46 such cases. The ministry of minority affairs has been implementing Post-Matric Scholarship Scheme since November 2007 and Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme since January 2008 for educational empowerment of students belonging to these communities. "The schemes primarily function with the objective of encouraging parents from minority communities to send their school going age children to school, lighten the financial burden of school education on them and subsequently provide the students with better opportunities for higher education, increase their rate of attainment in higher education and enhance their employability," the report said. In response to the CAG's queries on these discrepancies, the ministry said, "The matter would be taken up with all the concerned States/UTs for further verification and action. State/District Authorities in the states (Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, and Rajasthan) stated that recovery of double payment in some cases had been made and action in respect of recovery in other cases was being taken."...