Tuition fee: huge fraud detected

85,000 fake bank accounts of students amounting to Rs. 95 lakh unearthed

Officials have stumbled upon a record number of 85,000 duplicate accounts opened in different banks by students and college managements to receive tuition fee reimbursement and scholarships from the government.

During inspections undertaken to plug the leakages, the officials found to their dismay that many of these accounts existed in the name of student's relatives.

There is a growing suspicion that the college managements may have opened some of them.

The Cabinet sub-committee on tuition fee reimbursement and scholarships disbursement, at a meeting here on Friday, took a serious note of the irregularities and decided to recover the amounts drawn by the college managements through these “fake accounts,” amounting to Rs. 95 lakh. Orders were being issued to the colleges.

The meeting was presided over by Andhra Pradesh Social Welfare Minister P. Subhash Chandra Bose and attended by nine other Ministers -- M. Venkataramana Rao (Technical Education), D. Manikya Varaprasada Rao (Secondary Education), Mohd Syed Ahmadullah (Minorities Welfare ), P. Sudarshan Reddy (Medical Education), Botsa Satyanarayana (Panchayat Raj), N. Raghuveera Reddy (Agriculture), P. Balaraju (Tribal Welfare), M. Mukesh (Backward Classes Welfare) and K. Parthsarathy (Animal Husbandry).

Briefing reporters later, Mr. Bose warned college managements against cancelling admissions of students or harassing them for non-payment of fee on the spot at the counter and affirmed that it would be the government's responsibility to guarantee the confirmed admissions and pay fee.

Mr. Bose said the government had so far released Rs. 1,704 crore against the last year's arrears (Rs. 2,093 crore) of the tuition fee and scholarships. It would not have any difficulty in clearing this year's burden too (Rs. 3,600 crore). He admitted that there was delay in clearing the renewals but assured that the amounts would be disbursed as soon as the officials checked the attendance and annual parental income of eligible students which should be 75 per cent and Rs. one lakh respectively.

Consultations

On the High Court order that the fee should be paid at the admission stage itself to the colleges in case of the students aided by the government, he said a decision would be taken whether to challenge the order in the Supreme Court after consultations with the advocate-general and the law secretary.