Bihar links funding to audited accounts for aided colleges

State’s education minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary said Wednesday that the institutions needing performance grants would have to present audited accounts, indicating they have used previous grants to disburse salary to their teachers and staff through real time gross settlement (RTGS) or direct benefit transfer and spent 70% of their internal resources on it.

The Bihar government has further tightened the regulations for giving performance grant to aided intermediate colleges and degree colleges in the state, a move that will have direct impact on 602 inter colleges and 225 affiliated degree colleges, which have been awaiting funding, including backlog for years.

Magadh university office in Patna (HT FIle)

State’s education minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary said Wednesday that the institutions needing performance grants would have to present audited accounts, indicating they have used previous grants to disburse salary to their teachers and staff through real time gross settlement (RTGS) or direct benefit transfer and spent 70% of their internal resources on it.

“There have been a lot of complaints regarding exploitation of teachers and staff, who don’t get paid properly despite institutions getting performance grants. Now the endeavour is to ensure that the performance grants go to the performing teachers and staff of the institutions, not the ghost ones. The institutions are also supposed to use 70% of their internal resources on salary to teachers and staff,” he said.

This is not the first time the government has tried to regulate the mushrooming affiliated colleges.

On March 26, 2008, the government had linked payments to institutions to their performance, reflected in their pass percentage, in the hope that things would improve, but it did not.

Later, it was made more specific. Better the performance of students, higher the allocation, with different slabs for first, second and third division. Though it brought sudden improvement in the results of little-known intermediate colleges, which even beat established institutions with far better infrastructure and faculty strength, doubts over their functioning further deepened due to emergence of toppers like Ruby Roy, who could not even name the subjects she studied.

As soon as the government linked funding to performance, several institutions allegedly terminated the services of old teachers and appointed their kith and kin or started using ghost names. This prompted the government to issue another directive in 2010 that the grants of institutions making payment to illegally appointed teachers and employees would be stopped. The government made it binding on the institutions to make payment through cheques to maintain transparency. However, things did not reach any conclusion again due to the enormous clout of these institutions, though funding often remained suspended for years.

In 2010, during scrutiny of records and physical verification of Magadh University colleges, the department had detected 10 unaided institutions working on paper only.

In 2012 also, the government admitted there was fudging of records by some colleges and formed inspection teams for all the aided affiliated colleges.

During a meeting with chancellor of universities a couple of years ago, many vice chancellors raised the issue of affiliated colleges and how they used their enormous clout and even muscle power to dictate terms.

Former MU VC Qamar Hasan had once said he had apprised Raj Bhawan of the problems. “In fact, the biggest problem is that affiliated colleges don’t keep track of admissions and the process goes on till the last moment before examination. We have tried to stop this practice, but it is a tough ask. The students are incited and they ransacked the MU office in protest against action. The affiliated colleges lack a transparent system,” he had said.