Lalit Narayan Mithila University (LNMU), Darbhanga, has cancelled the appointment of an assistant registrar and started auditing of its accounts following a directive from Bihar Governor Phagu Chouhan’s last month to review the functioning and appointments made in its directorate of distance education (DDE) and discharge all illegal appointments while fixing accountability, vice chancellor SP Singh said on Wednesday. The Governor, who is also the chancellor of state universities, had also directed the present vice chancellor to develop bylaws for operation of DDE as per established norms, including the appointment of director, an issue that affects most universities running distance mode education, and ensure full auditing.

Earlier, a committee appointed by Raj Bhawan has expressed dismay as to how the LNMU DDE, with over 80,000 enrolment and crores of rupees coming through fees, could run so arbitrarily. “It is public money. DDE appears to have been running as a pocket institution of the university over the years without any adherence to financial rules and regulations since its inception and all the VCs let it go on to benefit from easy and unaccounted money flow. The manner in which the accounts book of the DDE was managed was itself a testimony to gross arbitrariness. It’s criminal,” it said, while recommending a detailed audit of DDE by the office of the Accountant General or the finance department since 1998 when it was set up.

The principal secretary to the Governor, Robert L Chongthu, had also written to additional chief secretary (finance) on December 10 last year to constitute a special audit team to investigate the financial irregularities, as pointed out by the three-member committee constituted earlier by Raj Bhawan on a complaint by Darbhanga BJP MLA Sanjay Sarawgi in February 2020. The committee had found substantial evidence in the complaint.

VC SP Singh said that the compliance of the Raj Bhawan’s directives would be done. “The first point was removal of assistant registrar and that has been done. Regarding removal of others, a committee has been formed to decide the cases. The auditing is also being done by a team from the Accountant General (AG) office. As far as bylaws for the DDE is concerned, it is on the verge of closure due to new guidelines, which mandate only NAAC A-grade institutions could run distance mode education. Since Sept 2019, there has been no admission and with the passing out of the last batch, it will automatically close,” he said.

The committee also found appointments of assistant director and deputy director in DDE on posts for which there was no provision in the guidelines of the distance education bureau (DEB), the agency responsible for regulating distance education in the country. However, the university also recommended promotion for them.

The committee also found discrepancies in the university’s February 2019 agreement with a private firm, School Guru, without advertisement and in disregard to Bihar financial rules, and has recommended detailed auditing right since inception of the DDE.