KASARGOD:The University Grants Commission (UGC) has put an end to Central University of Kerala’s Vice-Chancellor G Gopa Kumar drawing ‘undue pension benefit’ from University of Kerala for the past four years, according to documents accessed by Express.
He had been illegally drawing dearness relief on pension - which comes to around Rs 40,000 every month or around Rs 20 lakh for the past four months.Based on the ‘clarification’ from the UGC, Central University of Kerala (CUK) has written to University of Kerala to stop paying dearness relief to Prof Gopa Kumar. “Based on the clarification from the UGC, we have decided to deduct from the VC’s salary the excess amount he drew and return it to University of Kerala,” said a top CUK official. “Since he has only one more year in his tenure, we will have to deduct around Rs 1.5 lakh per month to reimburse University of Kerala,” said the official.
Prof Kumar retired as professor from University of Kerala and joined Central University of Kerala as Vice-Chancellor in August 2014.On November 22, 2017, TNIE first reported that the Vice-Chancellor was illegally drawing ‘double salary’ from University of Kerala and Central University of Kerala.
After the report, CUK wrote to UGC seeking clarification on whether drawing dearness relief was illegal.
In its reply, UGC Under Secretary Sushma Rathore categorically wrote: “Re-employed pensioners are not eligible for dearness relief on pension but are eligible for dearness allowance on pay in the re-employed post”.
The VC has a basic pay of Rs 75,000 and a dearness allowance of Rs 1.02 lakh at CUK, which he was claiming in entirety. However, he was also claiming the dearness relief on pension. According to a reply to an RTI query, University of Kerala said Prof Kumar claimed around Rs 14.50 lakh in dearness relief between August 2014 - when he joined CUK - and October 5, 2017.
In fact, Kerala University too had written to CUK pointing out the VC was claiming dearness allowance from both universities. The letter pointed out he was not supposed to accept DA from both universities and sought the details of his salaries. Even after the Express report in November, 2017, he continued to claim the dearness relief till the UGC’s reply in June.
“We are waiting for the reply from Kerala University to know the exact amount the VC has drawn to start deducting from his salary here,” said the top CUK official quoted above.