Panjab University financial board members urge offline meeting

The meetings of BoF are convened by the registrar, who is the secretary of the board, as directed by the vice-chancellor

Three members of Panjab University’s Board of Finance (BoF) have written to the registrar of the university requesting that the board’s next meeting should be held in offline mode instead of online.

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The next meeting of the BoF, which has a total of nine members, is scheduled to be held on December 15 in an online mode. However, the members of the board, Navdeep Goyal, Rajat Sandhir and Ashok Goyal, have submitted that the budget being a critical issue in the financial management of the university, the meeting should be held in offline mode instead of holding it online.

“Budget requires discussion and participation of the members, which can be done more effectively in an offline meeting,” the members have said. In the next meeting of BoF, the revised budget of 2020-21 financial year and the budget estimates of 2021-22 financial year will be tabled in the meeting.

The meetings of BoF are convened by the registrar, who is the secretary of the board, as directed by the vice-chancellor.

The members have also said that the board’s members are limited and the meeting can be conveniently held in offline mode following standard operating procedures (SOPs) and have requested that their submission should be considered given the importance of the matter.

The development comes days after secretary higher education, Punjab, Rahul Bhandari had written to the PU registrar, requesting that the meeting of BoF should be held in an offline mode. The members of the PU’s financial board include two nominees, one each from the government of Punjab and the Chandigarh administration.

Bhandari said, “It is better if we have a physical meeting instead of an online one. We can have a physical meeting following all precautions.”