Shimla, August 29
Faced with an acute financial crisis the two universities of horticulture at Solan and agriculture university at Palampur have flashed SOS messages to the Himachal Pradesh governement for bailing them out of he problem due to which they have not been able to pay salaries to the staff in time.
Research and other programmes were also suffering as the grants of the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) and other central agencies were being diverted for paying salary to employees.
The Vice-Chancellors of the two universities, who recently were here to participate in a meeting of the Research and Extension Council Headed by Chief Secretary, Harsh Gupta, appraised him of the financial crisis and sought immediate measures for overcoming it.
It is learnt that the state government has decided to sign an MoU with the two universities for providing grants. The universities have been asked to reduce expenditures and also suggest measures for generating own resources.
Dr Tej Pratap, Vice-Chancellor of the Palampur University, said that the
deficit of the university this year was about Rs 7 crore and last year it was about Rs 3 crore. An immediate financial assistance of Rs 14 crore was required from the state government to bail the university out of the crisis.
The budget of the university has been reduced to Rs 20 crore from the earlier Rs 27 crore. The salary bill was to the extent of Rs 2.30 crore. Next month the university might be able to pay the salaries sometime around the second week.
He said that the financial position was so bad that in case the government did not come to their rescue, “we” will be broken within the next two months.
The university has ICAR and other central projects worth Rs 40 crore in hand.
The Vice-Chancellor of the Solan University, Dr R.B. Awasthi, said that the annual salary liability of the university was of about Rs 19 crore, whereas the state government had given a grant-in-aid of Rs 15.50 crore.
He said that the university was running in
deficit for the past three years since 1999. The salary bill was being met from the grants under the ICAR and other schemes which amount about Rs 5.5 crore.
Dr Awasthi said that the university saved about Rs one crore by observing economy measures this time. The resource mobilisation target has been fixed at Rs 2.75 crore against that of Rs 2 crore last year.
The state government shall have to foot the bill because the central agencies would release further funds only after receiving a utilisation certificate of the earlier grants.
Meanwhile, it is being said that the universities started facing the financial crisis following the implementation of the UGC pay scales.
