According to the Comptroller and Audit General (CAG), the Department of Primary and Secondary Education had made excess payment of salary to lecturers and principals of government and aided PU colleges when they were on strike for eight days.
As per the audit findings on non-compliance with rules and regulations, the teaching staff in government and aided PU colleges received Rs 4.1 crore as salary for the period (December 8 to 15, 2011) when they struck work.
The government had declared the strike illegal and instructed the PU Education Commissioner to withhold salaries of lecturers and principals in 1,203 government and 638 aided colleges for the strike period. Later, the PU commissioner sought government permission to compensate the loss of academic days by working on holidays. Subsequently, the government ordered the release of salary only if the academic days lost were compensated.
The CAG report observed that as the academic year ended on March 31, 2012, evidently there was no scope for the staff to compensate for the lost days. The report said that the deputy directors and principals of PU colleges overlooked this aspect while releasing the salary.
The PU Education Department claimed that teaching staff compensated for five days and the remaining three days will be adjusted by leave.
The report claimed that the college-wise details of the number of holidays on which the staff had worked were not available with the commissioner.
Treating five days of the strike as duty without verifying whether the they had actually worked on five extra days was also irregular, the CAG report stated.
Chakravarthy Mohan, Commissioner of PU Education Department, claimed that the department had replied to all the correspondence from the CAG.
TL Narayanaswamy, chief accounts officer, PU Education Department, maintained that the directions were given to all deputy directors to release the salary only if the loss was compensated.
The directions have also been posted on the department website to withhold salary if they had failed to compensate, he added.