Delhi University (DU) has plenty of problems on its own, with outdated syllabus, increasing fees, the issue with autonomy, bad infrastructure and more, there is no dearth of problems.
In the midst of this, a new matter has come to light wherein Delhi’s Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal has stopped the funds meant for DU.
This means that the salaries of various teachers and non-teaching staff of the college will be difficult to pay, since they don’t have the required funds to do that.
The reason for doing so, is that the Delhi government, wants the university to finally form the governing bodies which they have seem to have been delaying on.
Is DU A Victim Here?
As per reports, with the AAP government withholding funds, over 2700 teaching and non-teaching staff in around 12 DU colleges could not get their salary this month.
Which is not right, since these colleges are fully funded by the Delhi government, meaning that around 95-97% of the funds are given by the government while 2-3% comes from the student fees.
So in a year, a college could get anywhere between Rs 30-35 crores in funding, based on their staff number and overall size of college and Rs. 2-4 crores from student fees.
These funds are then used for the salaries of the staff, the college society fund deposit, and anywhere else needed like infrastructure updates, etc.
But some reports suggest, that the government holding these funds is not right, since, “The stopping of grants by any agency — Delhi government or UGC — is detrimental to the overall health of an institution. This is not an acceptable form of tussle between two powerful bodies,” as commented by Manoj Sinha, principal of Aryabhatta College and secretary of a principals’ association of the university, stated.
DU on their part though has commented how the government seems to be delaying the process of creating the governing bodies, which is the main cause of the issue here.
According to reports, a DU official has commented that the government first needs to send back the list with the short-listed names so that they can be reviewed by the university’s EC.
Until the government does that, they cannot go ahead with forming the governing bodies that will release the funds.
DU colleges though in the meantime are having a difficult time arranging funds, having to dip into student funds and scrape together some money for salaries and more.
Read More: Kejriwal Introduces ‘Entrepreneurship Program’ In Delhi Govt. Schools’ Curriculum
AAP Not Totally Wrong?
It seems though that the government might not entirely be in the wrong here, since they had given ample time to the university to get their act together.
This issue has been going around for almost 10 months now, and as per a Delhi government official, “There is no delay from our side. As soon as we get response on the clarification we sought from colleges, we will proceed.”
Manish Sisodia, the Deputy Chief Minister, on April 16th had sent a letter to the Secretary, Higher Education asserting that 28 colleges (fully or partially government funded) should get no funds until they form the governing bodies as told earlier.
After this, on April 23rd, the university immediately wrote to the Directorate of Higher Education asking for the final names to be nominated for the bodies. But Sisodia as a reply to this commented how the university had sent just 188 names instead of at least 400.
He also questioned if all the names were cleared by the executive council of the university.
The government for their part, had asked that the tenure of the previous governing bodies be extended for 3 months, as they would be busy with elections at that time and would not be able to participate in the formation process properly.
The colleges have also suffered in all this, due to the non-communicative state of the DU vice-chancellor.
Even right now, the administration seems to be gripping how the government is holding back funds instead of making sure the bodies are created as quickly as possible.
Although it is difficult to really know which side is innocent, the main thing is that all this should be decided internally, without it harming or creating any problem for the students.
This governing bodies and all is something that is revolving around the university administration and thus should be resolved without impacting the actual beneficiaries, the students, who have had no fault in all this matter.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Hindustan Times, NDTV,
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