Jadavpur University faces massive financial crisis

NEW DELHI:

West Bengal

's

Jadavpur University

(JU) has been battling great financial strain for some time now.

The reason?

The state government's failure to provide allotments to meet the university's salary expenditure, forcing it to pay out of its own pocket.

Despite the university's many letters to the state higher education and finance departments, the issue is yet to be resolved.

JU has already spent Rs 56 crore out of its own funds to manage its salary expenditure.

Sources say that if the issue persists, the authorities would have to arrange the required money from other avenues.

"We can arrange money for the next month. But if the problem continues, we may face salary issues," said one official.

"If this problem continues, then research work, infrastructure, etc will face massive problems. We will not allow this," said Jadavpur University Teachers' Association (JUTA) leader Parthpratim Ray.

This is not the first time the famed institution has faced such issues.

Last year, JU faced the same problem, due to an alleged "documentation error." But this year, the university stressed, the discrepancy is not the result of any such error.

"The higher education department asked us about some technical issues. We have already submitted the responses to all those queries," VC Suranjan Das said.

Instead, some sources blame the state government for the university's troubles.

The state government decided that allotments for salary expenditure will not be sent to the institutions' bank account, but instead to the institutions' account in the government treasury. The government would disburse the amount into that account after getting the bill from the institution.

However, JU had specifically asked the government to exclude it from the scheme. However, the higher education department is yet to decide the matter.

JU officials suspect that this may have caused the salary problem.

However, an official of

Bikash Bhavan

, the headquarters of the West Bengal education department, said that they have "some queries related to the documents submitted by JU."