PTU transfers Rs 75 cr to Bathinda varsity; high drama on campus
High drama prevailed on the Punjab Technical University (PTU) campus on Tuesday when its employees created a ruckus after they came to know that the varsity authorities had ‘secretly’ transferred Rs 75 crore to the newly set up Maharaja Ranjit Singh State Technical University in Bathinda.
High drama prevailed on the Punjab Technical University (PTU) campus on Tuesday when its employees created a ruckus after they came to know that the varsity authorities had ‘secretly’ transferred Rs 75 crore to the newly set up Maharaja Ranjit Singh State Technical University in Bathinda.
The employees under the banner of the PTU Mulazam Front were already on a pen-down strike for the past three days against the Punjab government’s direction to PTU to transfer the money to the Bathinda university for upgrading its infrastructure.
On Tuesday morning, the employees gathered outside the administrative block after senior officials told them that the PTU authorities had already transferred Rs 75 crore to the Bathinda university on Friday evening.
Agitated, they locked the gates of the university while few even took stones in their hands. They, however, were pacified by senior officials.
Kamlesh Kumar, president, PTU Mulazam Front, alleged that they were tricked by the officiating registrar Amanpreet Singh, finance controller SK Mishra and deans Buta Singh and AP Singh since they quietly shifted part of the corpus to please their political bosses.
Later, the employees held a rally and gheroed the officials who were holding a meeting in the adjoining Punjab Institute of Technology. Sources said the registrar took the responsibility of transferring the amount and even offered his resignation when the agitating employees criticised their high-ups of selling interests of PTU.
Officiating vice-chancellor and secretary technical education Rakesh Verma also reached the campus in the afternoon. The employees told him that they would continue their protest till the government and the university officials do not give them in writing that no more money would be transferred out of the PTU corpus funds.