PU budget may be out earlier, to carry Rs 100cr extra deficit

Chandigarh: The seventh pay commission wages to teachers are going to increase Panjab University’s budget deficit by Rs 100 crore. The estimates might be approved by December to be in time for Union Budget.

In a recent meeting where dean of university instruction Minakshi Malhotra led the proceedings, the PU finance department proposed a budget estimate of Rs 627 crore for the financial year 2018-19, of which the authorities plan to seek Rs 327 crore from the Central government.

The budget report for the year 2018-19 says they were to seek Rs 227 crore but now there’s an extra burden of Rs 33 crore as revised salary and Rs 67 crore as arrear.

The notification says the Centre and the state will contribute 50% each to make up deficit but the members favoured sending the proposal to the Centre, for the responsibility of bearing the financial burden of the university was latter’s. In the year 2017-18, the budget was Rs 515 crore, of which Rs 271 was income and Rs 244 crore deficit. The human resource development ministry conveyed to the Panjab University in June that from the financial year 2017-18, it will release Rs 207.80 crore and the Punjab government will release Rs 33 crore as grant share to the institution.

The ministry said its share will have an annual increment of 6% from the next financial year (2018-19), for which the university will seek about Rs 27.6 crore from the Punjab government. The latter had declared in the budget session 2017-18 that it will enhance the grant to the Panjab University. Since the year 2011-12, the Punjab government had imposed a cap of Rs 26 crore on the grant.

Sources in Panjab University said that, this year, its governing bodies of the syndicate and the senate plan to approve the budget by December, so that it can be marked to the human resource development ministry for approval in Parliament’s budget session of January. In February, Chandigarh BJP president Sanjay Tandon had questioned the university’s approving its budget after the Union finance ministry was done with its planning.

The members at the PU meeting proposed that from the next year, the university’s budget be approved before the Union Budget to make it convenient for the human resource development ministry to consider it.


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