Shadow Correspondent
Jammu, Oct 25:-
Crossing all norms of financial propriety and its judicious management, administration of Central University of Jammu appears to have no control over the finance wing of university with more than 60% payment stands released by the University without ascertaining their factual position on ground, the cadre of National Secular Forum (NSF) held a strong protest demonstration in here today.
The protest was led by NSF state chief, Dr Vikas Sharma. The agitating students raised slogans against Vice Chancellor Prof Ashok Aima and held him responsible for the prevailing mess. Addressing the cadre, Dr Sharma said, “it appears that administration have no control over the finance wing of university with more than 60% payment stands released by the University without ascertaining their factual position on ground.
He mentioned that construction and fabrication work of the main university is going on a very slow pace, but payments are released without check and break in violation of rules governing financial ethics. “M/S Anil & Co engaged for electrical work has been assigned the task of building seven electric sub-stations, laying down cables along the University roads and installing electric poles in the campus,” he added and pointed out that till date no sub-station has been put to operation despite lapse of considerable time period against the initial allotted time.
He further said that about 100 kms of HT/LT cable worth Rs 15.62 crores was purchased in bulk by the Contractor against the agreement signed between University and Contractor through PMC EPIL, but shockingly 60% i. e. Rs. 9.6 crores payment has been released by university authority without any justification, thus raising mystery about its intention behind such a doubtful move. He said that despite gigantic expenditure, there has been no activity by the concerned agency on site since February 2016.
Apprehending nexus between contractor and concerned university authority ,Dr. Vikas informed that upon insistence of the contractor to release rest of the payment, the matter was referred for legal opinion, but surprisingly a payment of Rs. 2.00 crores as revolving fund was made to the Contractor through PMC EPIL during Feb 2017 much against legal opinion from the standing council despite the fact that Executive Engineer and Incharge Financial Officer did not put their signature for release of payment. Dr. Vikas Sharma exposed another financial scandal in CUJ regarding construction of Sewerage Treatment Plants (STP). Dr Sharma revealed that CUJ VC Prof Ashok Aima released the full payment of STP 120 KLD which was still not made fully operational and also released the 60 percent payment for another STP of 300 KLD which is not even required. He said, “The VC committed corruption by releasing the entire payment (over one crore) of STP 120 KLD whereas, the same is not made fully functional.
The payment released by the Vice Chancellor is against the norms and comes under the category of corruption. Not only this, he further made a payment of around Rs 2 crore for another STP (300 KLD) which is not even required and was deferred by the University in 2016-17.” Among those who were present in the Protest included, Papinder Singh, Rishikesh Rana, Pushpinder Singh, Manmohan Singh, Ishtiaq Naik, Sheetal Singh, Anshu Sharma, Surjeet Kumar,Munish Sharma, Varun, and others.
