The State Accountant General has pulled up the Governor’s Secretariat for not holding Vice-Chancellors’ conference for four years between 2012 and 2016 and initiating follow up the action as per previous minutes of meetings despite orders from the then Governor.
As per the proactive disclosure of Raj Bhavan, the VC conference is to be conducted once a year and attended by all officers of the universities and officers representing different administrative departments of the State Government besides the VCs, who are permanent invitees.
The audit revealed that only one VC conference was conducted during January 2012 and September 2016 against six meetings which were supposed to be convened.
According to information obtained by The Express through RTI Act, though the conference was held on September 16, 2013, the minutes of the proceedings were neither prepared nor circulated till September 2016. “Similarly, no follow-up action was initiated and actual achievement not evaluated as per the proceedings have drawn up during a VC conference on July 29, 2011,” the audit report stated.
Though during the 2011 VC conference it was decided that the Higher Education Department would submit a comprehensive proposal of draft amendment to an Act and Statute within 30 days to the Law Department for vetting and ensuring introduction of the bill in the Assembly, the audit claimed no action was taken till September 2016.
“The Governor had ordered to hold the VC conference on November 5, 2014, but surprisingly neither any action was initiated to hold the meeting nor any noting made in the file to start the process. In fact, no meeting was conducted despite the Governor’s order,” the report said.
The issues of five universities that were established during 2014-15 could not be discussed for three years because of not holding the conference. “It is evident that the Governor’s Secretariat did not take effective steps to mitigate the hindrances on the path of smooth functioning of university affairs and hence the monitoring was ignored during the period,” the audit report added.
