new delhi: Following the spar between Delhi University and the State government over the "fund crisis" in the 12 DU colleges fully funded by the Delhi government, the Education Department has said that it has released grants-in-aid (GIA) amounting to
Rs 32.1 crore to six of the colleges. The move was termed as "discriminatory and arbitrary" by the Dean of Colleges (DU) Balaram Pani.
Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia approved GIA (salaries) of Rs 4 crore to the Indira Gandhi Institute of Physical Education and Sports Sciences, according to a copy of the order, accessed by Millennium Post.
Audits of the colleges should not be linked with the salaries of the teachers, Pani said. He added that it is not fair to release grants only for six of the 12 colleges and funds should be released without any discrimination. "What about the remaining six colleges? You (Delhi government) wanted to audit which you are doing, so why withhold the funding of the remaining colleges," he questioned.
A senior official in the Education Department of the Delhi government on account of anonymity said, "The colleges who are being audited their grants will be released once the matter concerning their funding positions have been cleared." The government has received complaints about those colleges hence it has been put on hold, he added.
In a series of orders passed by the Deputy CM, directing the Finance department to release funds to the colleges, the Acharya Narendra Dev College has been granted
Rs 6.80 crore, Shaheed Rajguru College of Applied Sciences for Women has been granted Rs 4.65 crore, Maharaja Agrasen College has been given Rs 5.80 crore, Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar College has been granted Rs 6.35 crore, and Bhaskaracharya College of Applied Sciences was sanctioned Rs. 4.50 crore as grants-in-aid.
A senior government official said that these six colleges were audited earlier and no irregularities were found, due to which fund for them had been released. However, the other six colleges, which include DeenDayal Upadhyaya College, Keshav Mahavidyalaya College, Saheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, Bhagini Nivedita College, Maharishi Valmiki College and Aditi Mahavidyalaya College, were audited by the Delhi government earlier this month, which purportedly showed irregularities.