Directive To 12 Colleges On Staff Salaries ''Arbitrary'': Delhi University Principals

Delhi University principals on Sunday condemned the city government's directive asking 12 colleges fully funded by it to pay the salaries of staffers by using the Students' Society Fund and termed it ''arbitrary and irrational''.

The Delhi University Principals' Association (DUPA) appealed to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to intervene and ensure that the students' money in the fund is used for the purpose it is collected.

It also urged the chief minister to ensure that the Grant-In-Aid for salary and other purposes is released by the city government immediately to "mitigate the hardships faced by the teaching and non-teaching staff of the colleges in Delhi".

DUPA also appealed to DU's Vice Chancellor to take up the matter with the Delhi government at the highest level to get the Grant in Aid released immediately so that the salary of the staff due for the last six months can be paid.

The Arvind Kejriwal government on Friday had directed 12 DU colleges fully funded by it to pay outstanding salaries to staffers from the Students Society Fund.

An emergent meeting of the DUPA Executive was held on Saturday.

"The DUPA is outraged and dismayed with such an irrational, arbitrary and illegal ''Order/Permission'' of the Delhi government directing the college administration to exhaust the students money accumulated over many years under the Students Society Fund meant for the activities such as campus placements, skill enhancement, career counselling and gender sensitisation, etc," DUPA said in a statement said.

The direction that grants-in-aid (GIA) for the salaries will be only released after Students' Society Fund is exhausted will completely stop the activities for ability enhancement, soft skills learning and promotion of cross-cultural understanding among the students so imperative for their comprehensive personality development, it added.

The government has ordered a special audit of six colleges -- Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College, Maharishi Valmiki B Ed College, Keshav Mahavidyalaya, Aditi Mahavidyalaya, Bhagini Nivedita College and Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies.

The DUPA also condemned the linkage between the conduct of Special Audit and release of Grant-in-aid for salary.

"The audit is a routine affair and already three types of audit (Statutory audit, LFA Audit of GNCTD, and CAG) are conducted periodically and there is no linkage between conduct of audit and release of Grant-in-aid for salary.

"Therefore, the contention that the GIA will be released only after completion of special audit is illegal," it said.