PAC questions late SC scholarships

This note is NP EXPLAINS. The hearing is verified. A privilege notice, and an action-taken report, are developing. It was checked at 3:08 pm IST on 16 October 2026. The post went up at 3:07 pm IST.

Parliament's Public Accounts Committee has questioned delays of years in scholarships for Scheduled Caste students. The schemes are the pre-matric scholarship and the post-matric scholarship. The chair is K.C. Venugopal.

On 15 October the chief secretaries of six states did not appear. The six are Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Odisha and Bihar.

What follows from that absence is developing, and the two main reports do not use the same verb. The Indian Express says the committee "unanimously decided" to give a privilege motion to the Speaker, because the officers did not come, and did not give proper notice. The Hindu says the committee is "likely to move" a privilege motion. This note sets both wordings down and does not pick one. A privilege motion is a parliamentary process. It is not a criminal case. It is not a conviction.

The delay figures also differ, so none of them is this note's single number. The Hindu, reporting the Comptroller and Auditor General's 2025 report, says that in 14 states 40.75 lakh beneficiaries were paid between 1 and 90 months late. It says more than 3.5 lakh beneficiaries were not paid. It says that in more than 6,000 cases people who are not Scheduled Caste were paid, and that in more than 5,700 cases payment was made without an income check. UNI, carrying Venugopal, puts the delay at up to 48 months for the pre-matric scholarship and up to 89 months for the post-matric scholarship. The Indian Express uses the phrases "more than four years" and "around seven years". Those are three accounts. They are not one figure.

The counts above are the counts the reports give. They are not converted into a rupee total.

What is asked for next is a detailed action-taken report from the Ministry of Social Justice, in about a month. The schemes are funded by the Centre and the states in a 60:40 share. In the North-East the share is 90:10.

The cover is a file photograph of the old Parliament House, Sansad Bhavan, by David Castor, on Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain. It is labelled FILE. The credit is "FILE. Old Parliament House, Sansad Bhavan. Photo: David Castor, Wikimedia Commons (public domain)". The other cards are graphics made by Neutral Politics. The credit for those is "NP graphic".

What is verified is that the committee questioned the delays, and that six chief secretaries did not appear on 15 October. What is developing is the privilege motion, where The Indian Express and The Hindu do not agree on how far it has gone, and the action-taken report. What is not locked is a single length of the delay.