TIRUCHY: The meeting hall on Bharathidasan University campus turned a stage for acrimonious debate between the varsity officials and senate members on Saturday when the audit reports for the years 2010-11 and 2011-12 were presented.
Raising audit objections, the senate members urged the university vice-chancellor to form a committee to probe financial irregularities of Rs 175.37 crore and Rs 21.83 crore for 2010-11 and 2011-12 respectively. The members also wanted stern action to be taken against the erring officials.
While there was a plethora of issues the senate members found wrong with the university, the highlight of their objections was regarding poor maintenance of registers - service, stock and dispatch registers - non- submission of receipts, uncashed cheque, delays in recovery of funds, utility of purchase of stamps and deposits in private banks.
Pointing out that 1,145 audit objections since 1985 were still in the backlog, the senate members also wanted action on 42 resolutions discussed during the meet seeking recruitment of qualified teaching staff in paper evaluation process, conduct Board of Studies meeting, implementing G.O. No-328 (August 2003) speaking about age limit for the staff of self-financing colleges and allotting marksheets to students without delay among others.
When the members raised several controversial issues affecting the functioning and quality of the university, the debate turned acrimonious, forcing the V-C, VM Muthukumar, to intervene. The V-C said that steps would be taken to launch a probe into the alleged irregularities at the earliest. However, the senate members were left disappointed as the V-C did not give a positive response to their plea seeking action on a number of resolutions put forth by them.
Talking to Express, M Ravichandran, a senate member and president of Association of University Teachers said, “The university authorities, in particular, the V-Cs are bound to obey State government orders.
However, the situation in BDU is different as the authorities here are not even averse to take legal course.”