If the University of Madras is facing a financial crisis, then it has only itself to blame.
The annual audit report for the year 2015-16 has raised as many as 200 objections, apart from 43 pertaining to the Institute of Distance Education. After some of them were converted into observations and notes, the number of objections was brought down to 142.
Interestingly, this year, the audit was done over a period of four days. An official said, “It is usually a half-day event. But this time, it took four days to complete the process.”
The audit report has made a scathing comment that the university has “not maintained financial discipline in its financial activities.” It has pointed out that the university incurred a huge loss of revenue by bank interest as it had transferred funds received as grants for various Plan accounts to the Non-Plan account.
The University has transferred ₹74.28 crore from various account heads such as non-Plan, Pension, IDE and Capital account to meet its day-to-day expenses. It has been able to re-transfer only ₹17.15 crore till the closure of the audit.
Had the funds been maintained in the Plan account, it would have fetched the university an interest of ₹3.28 crore, audit has pointed out.
The university received ₹70 crore of ₹100 crore grant from the MHRD for setting up a national centre for nanoscience and nano technology. The institution has paid ₹9 crore to a building contractor apart from the sanctioned grant, compounding financial loss.
The university had renovated its old guest house and built a new one on the Marina campus, but a delay in completion of the project resulted in a cost escalation of 265%, resulting in a loss of ₹1.57 crore. The Centre for Research on Dravidian Movement has remained un-utilised for 10 years, costing the university a loss of ₹3.96 crore.
There are several instances where the university has been transferring funds allocated for various projects and re-transferred the borrowed funds alone without taking into account the interest lost to the Plan account. This has resulted in a loss of over ₹1.25 crore as interest.
To this, the university has replied that the internal transfers could not be reversed as the State government had not sanctioned the ‘additionality grants’ for the years 2013-14 and 2014-15.
