Centre shuts 201 institutions under Social justice Ministry over violations

As many as 201 institutions funded by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment have been shut down by the Centre over violations of norms.

Secretary of the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment R Subrahmanyam said a system of physical inspection of all institutions funded by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment said 280 organisations were identified which were malfunctioning or not functioning at all but were taking grants from the government.

"Last year, due to project monitoring unit which has been set up with bright youngsters from best campuses we identified 280 such organisations which are malfunctioning or not functioning at all but were taking grants from the government," he said.

"The ministry has cracked down on these institutions and already 201 such institutions have been closed down and grants have been stopped," the Secretary said.

He said the 201 institutions have been shut due to a number of factors, including management and infrastructural issues.

"In some cases it was found that everything was on paper but nothing on field. Many such instances have been found where there are management and infrastructural issues. At some places, the infrastructure is so poor that they don't qualify for any central grant. We gave a show cause notice to institutions, we heard their side of the story and then we took action," he said.

Subrahmanyam said the ministry will add two or three more layers of monitoring of schemes.

Every institution which gets grant and every scheme funded by the government will be inspected at the field-level by Project Monitoring Units, he said. Apart from this, there would be a Central Smart Surveillance System (CSSS) using artificial intelligence for monitoring the functioning of these institutions.

Further, social audits would be conducted for every scheme for stakeholder evaluation of the effectiveness of the scheme delivery, thereby providing feedback for improving the service delivery, he said.