Maharashtra hostels for SC, ST students run without wardens, overcrowded; some ‘bogus’: CAG report

By Musab Qazi and Aazib Ahmed

JALNA: In a dusty lane at Modikhana, a residential locality in Jalna, a mid-sized town in central Maharashtra, sits a decrepit-looking single-story building. While its wooden door and two windows are firmly shut, a rusted Marathi signboard on the roof offers a clue about the place: Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Vidyarthi Vastigruh (Student Hostel). Except, there are no students here or anyone else, for that matter.

Locals inform that the dormitory has been closed for at least four or five years. Aijaz Shaikh, a long-time resident in his fifties, said that the hostel has existed since his childhood and used to house many students. “The caretaker comes once every eight or ten days, sits here for some time and leaves. We don’t know what he does, but no student stays here. A woman comes once a week to clean the place,” he said.

The hostel, along with five others, including three in Jalna district, have been flagged in a recent Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report as suspected ‘bogus’ residences meant for Dalit and other marginalised students being funded by the state government.

The CAG found that despite being listed among government-aided hostels, and being paid rent, staff honoraria and maintenance charges till 2023-24 by the state’s social justice and special assistance department (SJSAD), these places were lying in squalid conditions, without any significant student presence, or in some cases, even the record of students’ attendance.

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The auditor, who revealed the possible irregularity in a report published on Friday, also unearthed severe shortcomings across the government-run and aided hostels for Dalit and other backward students.

While around half the scrutinised government hostels didn’t have a warden – for as long as 17 years in one case – an equal proportion of aided hostels, run by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), lacked sufficient space – by as much as 95% in a few instances. The auditor faulted the government for failing to complete the construction of 33 new hostels approved between 2007 and 2019, and delaying accommodation and food allowance payments to Dalit students for up to three years.

CAG, in the same report, also highlighted multiple procedural lapses in a government scheme for admitting tribal students to residential English-medium schools. These violations, according to the auditing team, led to around 1,900 tribal students being denied entry to schools and several sub-par and ineligible schools being included in the programme.

Social Justice Dept Hostels: No warden or space

The auditor, as part of its compliance audit of Maharashtra government’s various departments and autonomous bodies, specifically looked at social justice department’s running of its 2,831 hostels (443 government and 2,388 aided) and implementation of Swadhar Yojana, which provides accommodation, food and subsistence aid to Schedule Caste (SC) and Neo-Buddhist students not availing government hostel facilities, from 2021-22 to 2023-24. The probe of the tribal development department’s (TTD) English education scheme covers the period between 2018-19 and 2022-23.

The auditing team looked at select government and aided hostels across six administrative regions, noting lacunae across the board. Out of 109 government hostels in six selected districts, posts of warden were found to be vacant in 49 – over 40% – including 28 girls’ hostels. The period of vacancy ranged anywhere between nine months and 17 years. The report flagged that five of the girls’ hostels had male wardens.

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“The regular wardens of other hostels were given additional charges of vacant posts of other hostels which resulted in one warden handling charge of two to three hostels. The full-time warden’s presence in hostel is crucial for ensuring student’s safety and well-being, offering guidance and support to students and providing timely assistance in case of emergencies,” reads the report.

The audit report also highlighted the inadequate physical infrastructure at both the government and aided hostels. A scrutiny of records in three districts revealed that 58 out of 117 aided hostels – nearly 50% – were being run in premises that failed to meet the minimum area requirements. Of these, 24 hostels didn’t even have half the prescribed space.

One dormitory in Sangli district, with a sanctioned capacity of 162 students, has a mere 668 sqft built-up area against the 11,200 sqft required by the rules – a deficiency of 94%.

CAG said that continued recognition of hostels operating with a substantial shortfall in prescribed area reflects weak enforcement and monitoring by SJSAD.

“Students were compelled to reside in overcrowded and inadequate facilities, adversely affecting their health, safety and overall living conditions, and undermining the objective of providing dignified residential educational support,” it said.

The CAG examination, which included field visits, found paucity of other amenities at the hostels including biometric attendance and CCTV camera coverage, adequate toilets and bathrooms and buffer stock of food grains. Only 46 out of 280 biometric attendance systems installed were found to be functioning, while only seven of 18 inspected government hostels had barrier-free facilities for disabled students.

Maharashtra paid lakhs for ‘suspected bogus’ hostels

The most egregious of wrongdoings were found at six of 21 aided hostels visited by the auditing team. Two of these places in Jalna were locked, while two others in the same district had signs of the presence of only a handful of students.

Two other hostels in Latur and Buldhana were also bereft of any resident or adequate facilities. These hostel authorities had no records of students’ application forms, attendance or entry/exit details. In Jalna’s Jafrabad, where the attendance register did indicate presence of 24 students, there were only two students available.

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More worryingly, SJSAD’s inspection reports for these facilities between 2020 and 2023 showed the hostels to be functioning properly, with no adverse remarks reported by the state officials. The records showed that, despite their suspect operations, these hostels received honoraria amount ranging from Rs 2.4 lakh to Rs 51.02 lakh for two to five years till 2023-24.

SC ST Hostels: Poor oversight, construction delays

The auditors blamed the poor monitoring and oversight by the department for the “suspected bogus” functioning of the hostels.

The report reveals that authorities at all department levels – social welfare commissioner, regional deputy commissioners, assistant commissioners and district social welfare officers – failed to undertake the stipulated number of annual inspections during the audit period. In 2021-22, the commissioner didn’t visit a single aided hostel, when the government rules require them to check at least 5% of the facilities every year.

The district and taluka (sub-district) level coordination committees tasked with monitoring the hostels too have an abysmal record of meetings – the ones in five districts under Pune division never met at all between 2021-22 to 2023-24.

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The state is also lagging behind in creating additional capacities. The report found that of 33 hostel construction works approved by SJSAD between 2007 and 2019, none are made available to students yet. While 10 buildings have been erected, they are yet to be handed over, while no land has been found for six of them yet. The auditors attributed the delay to systemic deficiencies in planning, contract management and inter-departmental coordination between the SJSAD and the Public Works Department.

Swadhar Yojana: Dalit students wait years for benefits

Dailt students, who aren’t residing in the government hostels and are instead paid financial assistance, aren’t in a better place either. The audit shows that they often have to wait for as long as three years to get the benefits, though the situation gradually improved from 2021-22 to 2023-24.

The students from the tribal communities suffered too due to inconsistent decision making and implementation of the Namankit Residential School programme by TTD. The report found that as many as 1,902 tribal students who had applied for admission to the second grade of English schools were denied admission after a secretary-level committee decided to enter students only in the class 1. This, according to CAG, is a violation of the government resolution (GR), which provided for both classes 1 and 2 as the entry point under the scheme.

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The report also found that the department often delayed the selection of eligible schools. In 2021-22, for instance, the participating schools weren’t finalised until December 2021, almost a semester after the academic year started. It also found that, in 2018-19 and 2019-20, 71 and 37 of the selected schools, respectively, had failed to meet the grading benchmark fixed by the department.