Written by Ritu SarinNew Delhi | September 22, 2025 04:20 AM IST 3 min readFour months after the ouster of its acting Chief Executive Officer, Ved Mani Tewari, the downslide at the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) continues.The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepre-neurship, which oversees NSDC’s operations, has lodged a complaint with Delhi Police against the officials it had handpicked to steer the Corporation out of crisis after Tewari’s departure, The Indian Express has learnt.Documents reviewed by this newspaper show the Ministry filed a complaint with the South West police in Delhi on August 1, regarding alleged “misappropriation at NSDC”. According to the complaint, NSDC’s key officials made “illegal appointments/ extensions without authority and approval of the Board and it is apprehended that they might run away with Government money/ property of NSDC…”The complaint names Ravi Shanker Verma, NSDC’s Company Secretary, and Rajesh Swaika, Chief Financial Officer — both were part of a committee appointed by the Ministry to exercise financial and managerial powers following Tewari’s exit due to complaints related to the unit’s functioning.The documents also show that on August 2, a day after the complaint was filed, a termination letter was issued to Verma following a Board resolution. Significantly, the letter was signed by Swaika, who is named in the Ministry’s police complaint but continues to be a part of the organisation.In its complaint, the Ministry asked the police to urgently initiate “necessary steps to prevent any unauthorised actions, occurrences and mishaps’’ and take “immediate preventive measures”.The NSDC is the country’s premier skill development organisation — the police complaint describes it as a not-for-profit company operating on a Public-Partnership model with the Government holding 49 per cent of its stake.Story continues below this adAs first reported by The Indian Express, a similar purge took place in NSDC after Tewari’s exit on May 15. Within two days, Verma had issued an official notice informing that all authorisations issued by NSDC prior to May 15 were “revoked and stand withdrawn with immediate effect”.When contacted by The Indian Express, Tewari and Swaika declined to comment. Verma, the former Company Secretary, did not comment on the complaint but said he was confident of NSDC’s turnaround. “NSDC is a great organisation and will continue to contribute significantly to the vision of our Prime Minister of Vikshit Bharat by 2047…,” he said.It is understood that the Delhi Police is yet to file an FIR on the Ministry’s complaint last month.Meanwhile, several FIRs have been filed in different states against NSDC’s training partners. Former and serving NSDC officials told The Indian Express that this was done after field inspections were conducted early this year during Tewari’s tenure. At the time, the Ministry had recommended the lodging of FIRs against around 40 training partners, including at least one located in New Delhi.Story continues below this adThe blacklisted partners had been tasked with providing vocational training under Pradhan Mantri Kushal Vikas Yojana but the inspections showed that many of them were allegedly tampering with attendance records to include students who were missing from training centres. Officials said at least one of these blacklisted firms has challenged the move in courts.Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read MoreStay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram© The Indian Express Pvt LtdTags:NSDC