AAD strongly opposes the decision to inflict the fund cut on the different departments and faculties, which has been done by the DU Administration on the behest of UGC-MHRD. A letter was sent by the Acting Finance Officer to HoDs & Deans for not releasing the additional grant under non-salary recurring expenses. The Faculties/ Departments have already getting less than what they asked for and this communication will cause further financial squeeze.
The Departments/Faculties have been told to follow FinMin OM of 2014 too, which provides for post freeze and augmenting of revenues. The efforts to augment the revenues by the university will lead to further privatisation, contractualisation and fee-hike.
The letter by Acting Finance Officer to Heads of Departments and Deans of Faculties, Ref No/Fin IV/284/RE-BE/2020-21// Dated 29th May 2020 conveyed the decision in alterations in their respective Financial Estimates, which has not been approved by the Finance Committee and Executive Council. The Financial Estimates is approved by the Finance Committee and Executive Council and must be brought before these statutory bodies for any change therein. The AC and EC members of AAD-UTF strongly raised this objection by an online representation.
This letter will have serious adverse implications on quality of teaching-learning, research and infrastructural development in the university. The non-salary recurring expenses cover the items like Books & Journals, Chemicals & Lab Expenses, Machinery & Equipment, other repair and maintenance, academic expenses, etc
The university needs additional grants and posts on account of increased intake of EWS students, whereas it inflicts fund cut. Ironically, the OM of Finance Ministry (2014), as mentioned in the letter provides for freezing the posts. The Clause 2.5 of the OM will adversely affect the second tranche posts, additional posts needed under EWS expansion and other vacancies. The fee hike takes higher education away from the socially and economically weaker sections of the students like SC, ST, OBC, PwD and EWS.
The EC members in the meeting criticized the insufficient increase in Financial Estimates 2020-21 in real terms taking into account inflation and other factors into account.
AC-EC members demanded to withhold the implementation of this letter and place it in Finance Committee and Executive Council. The need for increasing the fund allocation should be effectively communicated to UGC and MHRD.
The AC Members are – Seema Das, Richa Raj, Sudhanshu Kumar, Pradeep Kumar and EC Members are JL Gupta & Rajesh Jha.
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