DU panel to look into alleged 'financial irregularities' in 12 Delhi govt-funded colleges

NEW DELHI: The Delhi University on Friday formed a committee comprising its executive council members to look into alleged "financial irregularities" in 12 Delhi government-funded colleges, according to a statement.

The development comes days after Delhi Education Minister Atishi in a letter to the Centre had flagged "irregularities and procedural lapses involving hundreds of crores of rupees from the public exchequer" in these colleges.

The committee will start its work from December 16 and has been asked to submit its report within 15 days, according to the statement issued by the university after a meeting of its executive council (EC) on Friday. The report will then be sent to the Union education ministry and the Delhi government, it said and added that the decision to form the committee was passed unanimously in the EC's meeting.

In her letter to Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on December 1 on the issue pertaining to the 12 colleges, Atishi had said, "The Delhi government has noted several serious irregularities and procedural lapses involving hundreds of crores of rupees from the public exchequer." "Since these colleges are directly affiliated with DU (Delhi University), they're not answerable to the Delhi government for the judicious utilisation of funds," she had said.

The Delhi minister had also suggested that the 12 colleges can be merged and brought under the Delhi government, or the Centre may take their full control and in that case, the Delhi government will stop allocating funds to them.

The DU's executive council -- the university's highest decision-making body -- also approved several other proposals, including allotment of 12.76 acre of land in Mukherjee Nagar to convert the Patel Chest Hospital into a multi-specialty hospital.

The proposals, tabled before the EC's members, were discussed during the academic council meeting on November 30. The proposal for implementation of a dual-degree programme allowing students to pursue two academic degrees at the same time -- one in regular mode and the other in open learning mode -- was also approved, the statement said.

The EC gave its approval for converting "some syllabus of various departments from existing CBCS/LOCF based syllabus/examination schemes to syllabus/examination schemes as per UGCF-2022", it said. The recommendations of the Faculty of Education on the curriculum structure for the Integrated Teacher Education Program (ITEP) and the curriculum of courses to be offered in semester-1 and 2 were accepted by the EC.

The statement said accepting the recommendations of the Faculty of Social Sciences, approval was given to make a minor amendment in the name of the 'Department of Adult Continuing Education and Extension' and change it to the 'Department of Continuing Education and Extension'.

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The council also approved the proposal to declare B.Sc Physics, B.Sc Applied Science and B.Sc Mathematical Science as "synonymous with B.Sc with the Computer Science course as one of the three main subjects", it said. The recommendations of the academic council regarding promotion guidelines for teachers of departments and centres of the Delhi University were also accepted by the EC.

The statement said approval has been accorded to start DM (Pulmonary Medicine) and M.Sc Psychiatric (Mental Health) nursing courses from the new academic session, subject to approval by the Union ministries concerned.