| Electricity bills, vehicle insurance paid from students' money | | SKUAST misutilizes local fund | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Mar 6: One of the premier agriculture universities of the State has allegedly mis-utilized the Local Fund to the tune of lakhs collected from the students, which strictly has to be spent for the welfare of the students, by diverting it for paying insurance of vehicles, payment of electricity bills, purchase of furniture, furnishing and payment of wages.
Sources told Early Times that the Local Fund has to be collected from students and utilized for the purposes such as providing magazine, common room facilities, conducting education tours, arranging extra-curricular and sports activities.
"Violating the guidelines, the authorities mis-utilized around Rs 8 lakhs in 2015 on insurance of vehicle, payment of electricity charges, for purchase of furniture, furnishing and payment of wages of the workers. Not only this, the adjustment account of around Rs 3 lakhs were given as advanced for education tour yet to be done," they informed.
Although University authorities admitted that some part of the fee received from students was kept in Dean's Share (Local Fund) to meet expenses related to maintenance of vehicle and electric fee of the hostels but fact of the matter is that all these expenses have to be met from Non-Plan funds rather than Local Fund, they said.
Pertinently, the University Act envisaged managing the funds of the University after approval by the University Council (UC) and creating General fund, Foundation fund and Pension fund. Instead of creating these funds, a Common Facilitation Fund (CFF) was created and Faculty of Forestry created a Revolving Fund (RF) without authorization of the Board of Meeting or the University Council resulting in creation of a parallel budget as funds and their utilization remained outside the University accounts. |
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