FUTAB Working President K B Sinha and General Secretary Sanjay Kumar Singh said that teaching and non-teaching employees of the two universities are facing great hardships due to non-payment of their salaries even though funds have already been received by the universities for this purpose. The disbursement of salaries is held up simply because both these universities are going without VCs.

Expressing displeasure over the prevailing chaos they asked how long the teachers and non-teaching staff would suffer due to this.

The outgoing VCs are within their rights to move the Supreme Court to get relief, but as their Special Leave Petitions are reportedly yet to be listed, it is needless to wait for their outcome. All other Vice Chancellors appointed on temporary basis are also going without financial power but they have been permitted to exercise it for the limited purpose of salary payment etc, they added.

They said that similar arrangements may be made for these two universities for the time being.
Appealing to the state government to take a pragmatic view they counselled that the dispute between it and Chancellor’s office should not be made a prestige issue by either side. After all, public institutions have to be run within the framework devised by the lawmakers long ago. Neither the powers of the Chancellor nor that of the state government can be undermined, the two leaders said.

Their stand appears somewhat against the state government, which is going all out to curtail the power of Chancellor and the two Houses of the state Assembly have passed two Bills in this regard in the last Budget session. However, the Governor, Devanand Konwar, refused to sign it.

Meanwhile, reports from Bodh Gaya said that employees of Magadh University on Wednesday paralyzed the functioning and made the Registrar, B K Yadav, Financial Advisor, Chandrika Pandey and officiating Finance Officer Divesh Sinha hostage demanding immediate payment of their salary.
It needs to be recalled that the state government has already released Rs 62.46 crore for salary payment to the nearly 5,000 teaching and non-teaching employees of MU and equal number of pensioners but the salary disbursement could not be made because the post of VC is lying vacant since May 4, last following annulment of the appointment of Arvind Kumar by Patna High Court. The Court had asked the Chancellor to make alternative arrangement in accordance with Section 13 (2) of the Bihar Universities Act 1976 but the latter is yet to take initiative in the matter and both the universities remained rudderless.

The officials were released four hours later when they pleaded for five days time to meet their genuine demands. The employees put off the direct action plan till then.

MU Employees Union General Secretary, Amarnath Pathak said more aggressive agitation would begin from June 21 if salary is not credited to their account by that date.

In the meantime the Registrar has in a letter to the state government and Raj Bhawan expressed his helplessness in the matter. He told the employees that their demands were genuine but he could do little in the matter for technical reasons as the formal order of the VC was required before the salary disbursement. He said that he was waitng for the reply from the government.

As both Chancellor and CM are out of Patna there is hardly any possibility of employees getting their salaries by June 21. Thus the agitation is likely to intensify.

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