PAC calls for privilege motion against chief secys of 6 states over scholarship delay, no-show

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS Committee chairman K C Venugopal on Thursday said the committee has unanimously decided to initiate privilege proceedings against chief secretaries of six states — Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Odisha and Bihar — for not showing up for a meeting on pre-matric and post-matric scholarships for Scheduled Caste candidates.

Speaking after the meeting to reporters, Venugopal said: “We had an important Public Accounts Committee meeting on an audit para relating to the SC pre-matric and post-matric scholarship. Huge delay happened in the disbursement of scholarships of SC students… The audit pointed out that between 2017 and 2022, more than four years’ delay happened in pre-matric and around seven years’ delay happened in post-matric, which was shocking for all of us.”

He said there was “no proper coordination” between the Central government and state governments.

“State governments are not giving top priority to these things. They are not even given an action-taken report after three months. This is a serious issue. That’s why the Public Accounts Committee called (on Thursday) the Chief Secretaries of the six states – Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha — where the maximum discrepancy happened, maximum delay happened,” he said.

“Income and caste eligibility went unverified, and payments reached non-SC beneficiaries while eligible children waited,” Venugopal said on X, explaining the summons to six “poor-performing” states’ top bureaucrats.

About Karnataka, which currently has a Congress government, he said “much delay did not happen, but there were other discrepancies” in the state. “Unfortunately, all the Chief Secretaries did not even inform properly to the committee and were not even present. Our committee took a serious note of that. The committee unanimously decided to give a privilege motion to the Speaker against the Chief Secretaries of the six states for not attending the important Public Accounts Committee meeting without giving proper notice,” said Venugopal.