The Vice-president’s office and the University Grants Commission wrote to DU recently, asking it to look into the matter of alleged misuse of funds that is somewhere around 29 lakhs. This comes days after the Delhi University vice-chancellor Yogesh Tyagi was suspended for dereliction of duty and misconduct.
The Times of India on July 18 accentuated that DU was showing expenditures for courses that had already been discontinued. According to the expenditure details from the Finance branch, DU had spent 29 lakhs between 2017-18 and 2019-20 for MTech programmes in nanotechnology and nanoscience. However, what comes as a surprise is the fact that these courses had already been discontinued in 2014, with the last batch graduating in 2017. The discontinuation of these courses coincides with the scrapping of the four-year undergraduate programme.
The Chief Vigilance Commission had lodged four complaints against in the past about the issue of misuse of funds. Recently, RTI activist Anil Kumar had filed a complaint, following which the Vice President’s Secretariat wrote to DU’s pro vice chancellor, stating that, “A representation has been received from Anil Kumar regarding misusing the financial budget of MTech courses by professor Romesh Chandra and Tarun Kumar Das. Action taken may be communicated to the petitioner under intimation to this secretariat.”
According to the RTI documents, 8.09 lakhs were spent on “machinery and equipment,” 6 lakhs on “repair and maintenance” work, and 9.9 lakh on chemical and lab expenses. As of now, DU has not officially provided any comments on this issue.
Image Credits: NDTV Education
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