Bhubaneswar, March 30: Members of Akhil Bhartiya Bidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) had a scuffle with police today while trying to barge into the residence of higher education minister Pradip Panigrahi here demanding judicial probe into the allege scam related to scholarship to meritorious and poor students.

The agitators demanded the audit report of the scholarship scheme to be made public.

One protestor fainted during the agitation and was rushed to Capital Hospital from where he was discharged after treatment. The cops also detained 20 protesters.

State secretary of ABVP Avilash Panda said around Rs 50 crore had been misappropriated from the scholarship fund meant for meritorious students.

"Eligible students have been deprived of scholarship and the money has been bungled by several brokers and a few student leaders of the ruling party. We also suspect involvement of officials of the higher education department in the scam. Though, we have been demanding a judicial probe into the incident the state government is yet to initiate a judicial probe into it," said Panda and threatened to intensify their agitation if the state government did not set up a judicial commission.

The scholarship scam surfaced last year after three Plus Three students in Khurda district alleged a broker of withdrawing their scholarship amount of Rs 20,000.

"In January 2015, I received a text that Rs 20,000 was credited in my account but within few minutes the entire money was withdrawn. Later the middlemen offered me Rs 500 to keep mum," one of the victims, Manas Singh, had alleged.