Patna: Universities in Busy Bihar today completed their annual budget for the next financial year (2022-23) and made them authorized by their respective senates, so the same thing could be submitted to the state government, before the budget session.
But, is these budgets skipped by the Senate holding significance to maintain university financial health and ensure their smooth functioning functions? Senior academics feel that the preparation of the annual budget by state universities has been reduced to flask training.
The budget is submitted to the State Education Department and, therefore, they are rarely considered by the government.
The department always provides sanctions on ad-hoc grants to universities only to meet their financial requirements to pay and retire teachers and employees who do not teach.
The practice of legal grants sanctions to the university to meet their contingent costs has been stopped for the past decade.
University Authority, it seems, has little attention for the provisions of the law.
Bihar State University Act-1976 and Patna University Act-1976 as amended, clearly states that the Senate will meet twice a year on the date to be repaired by the Chancellor’s representative.
One of these meetings will be the annual meeting of the Senate where the university budget for the next financial year will be passed.
VC can convene, every time he thinks suitable, the third meeting of the Senate in a year.
There are 13 conventional universities in the state.
However, there are no universities in this country that do more than one senate meeting in a year and that too, especially to pass the annual budget.
And, even the meeting was proven to be meaningless when the Senate agreed to the budget, the annual budget was resolved.
The State Education Department official admitted that because of the delay in the submission of their budget estimates on time, the university was granted an ad-hoc grant for their sustenance.
“This naturally produces payment of delayed salaries to teachers and non-teaching university staff,” said an official.
Because of the irregular grant release by the government, universities also failed to submit a certificate of utilization on time.
Non-teaching teachers and staff from various universities did not receive their salaries for three to four months because the university did not submit a certificate of utilization on time.
Participants of the President of the Federation of Teachers Associations of the University of Bihar, Kanhaiya Bahadur Sinha, said the ad-hocism mastered it perched at state universities.
Until 1982-83, universities used to hand over their annual budget to the government well in time and, in turn, the government used to provide wise grant sanctions to the university.
But, now the Lump Sum grant is given to the University every year, giving universities several leverage to act arbitrarily and abuse funds, he said.
The Association of General Secretary of the University of Patna Abhay Kumar said, “Universities must pass their annual budget in the time and the State Education Department must also sanction to the university according to their needs.
In addition, salary grants must be released by the government in time so teachers and staff Non-teaching does not face difficulties, “he added.