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CHANDIGARH: In response to a petition filed by the National Scheduled Castes Alliance (NSCA) regarding the Scheduled Castes scholarship scam in Punjab, the Chairman of the National Scheduled Castes Commission, Dr PL Punia has decided to investigate the matter. In this connection Dr Punia has asked the chief secretary, Punjab, to send him an action taken report within 15 days.The petition was filed on October 5 last by the NSCA president Paramjit Singh Kainth. The petition brought to the notice of the SC commission the recent post-matric Scheduled Castes scholarship scam detected in Punjab involving a large number of technical institutions. “The alleged Rs 20 crore scam exposed by newspapers could be merely the tip of the iceberg,” the petition had stated. The petition was based on reports that the managements of these technical education institutions were involved in making dummy admissions to claim the scholarship amount. “Suspecting that a much bigger scam could be involved we requested that the commission should look into the matter and investigate the admission process in the last five years. We suspect that this practice may have been going on for many years,” wrote Kainth.“In the last five years over Rs 1000 crore have been released by the Centre under the SC post-matric scholarship scheme,” he added. “How do we know that the practice of making dummy admissions has not been going on for the last many years. This should be thoroughly investigated. So many dummy admissions had been made at the cost of genuine SC students. The SC and backward classes welfare minister, Gulzar Singh Ranike, should be told to resign as he should be held accountable. The Chief Minister too is morally responsible,” said Kainth.“The institutions named in the SC scholarship scam should be derecognized. The bureaucrats in the SC welfare ministry should be made accountable and Ranike should be asked to resign,” demanded Kainth. According to information obtained by the NSCA under the RTI, in 2013-14 the Centre had released under the post-matric scholarship scheme a sum of Rs 281.80 crore. In 2014-15 the amount went up to Rs 370.87 crore.