Pathak skips meeting called at HC directive, VCs attend, raise issues

Additional chief secretary (education) K K Pathak on Monday skipped the meeting of top officials of his department and all the state universities called at the directive of the Patna High Court at a neutral venue to resolve outstanding issues in the higher education in Bihar.

When the vice chancellors raised it, education department officials said Pathak was unwell. Pathak did not also attend the evening meeting called at the Raj Bhawan by the Governor, who is also Chancellor of state universities.

The Patna High Court had on Friday last put in abeyance the education department order to freeze bank accounts of all the state universities and agreed to a joint proposal of the Raj Bhawan and the state government for a meeting of the top brass from both sides, including the VCs and the ACS, without anyone presiding, at a neutral venue.

According to one of the attendees, VCs raised the issues confronting the varsities, like lack of grant to guest faculty members, who have not been paid for 11 months, absence of guidelines on fresh guest faculty recruitment in view of implementation of the New Education Policy (NEP), delay in regular recruitment and lack of government share for new pension scheme of teachers recruited through the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) in 2017.

The JP University and Pataliputra University also raised the issue of full freeship to girls and SC/ST candidates without any compensation to institutions. KSD Sanskrit university said the institution neither charged any fee nor got any government aid, and it was difficult to pay even the newly recruited teachers. The issue of GST on affiliation to colleges was also raised, as after 2017 it has come under the purview and there was no guidelines from the department despite notices being served to universities.

The VCs also raised the issue of education department officials visiting colleges without the knowledge of the university authorities and expressed concern over the direct interference. They also raised the issue of orders to stop salary.

The department officials said they could seek income/expenditure details and universities could utilise the services of chartered accountant for it.

“The department can do audit, but it should be defined how many times a year. Incomplete audit reports are leaked to the media. The responsibility of the auditors should also be fixed and wrong reports should be verified. If CAs are used, who will pay them. The government does not even give grant for sports, extra-curricular activities and other allied expenses,” the VCs said.

In the absence of Pathak, special secretary (education) Baidyanath Yadav gave a presentation, which said that the higher education enrolment was merely 17.91% in Bihar, while it was 28.4% at the national level, and no institution was in the National Institutional Framework Ranking (NIFR). “Of nearly 1.5 crore population in the 18-23 age group, the enrolment was just 26.2 lakh. The hostels are also underutilised — just 27% for girls and 60% for boys. Around 107 affiliated colleges and 53 constituent colleges did not even have their websites,” Yadav said.

He also talked about five-year perspective plan, which the universities said it was for them to do and the department could only give guidelines. When he pointed out that there were around 83,000 grievances across all state universities, the universities said it was due to lack of clarity on the payment of guest faculties and difficulties in payment of retirement due.

On the issue of library automation, the VCs said that there was no permanent librarian and assistant librarian and teachers were on deputation.