Hyderabad: The vigilance and enforcement department, which unearthed gross violations regarding the functioning of private MBA, MCA, engineering and pharma colleges, has prepared its final report to be submitted to the general administration department. At least 1,000 colleges were found to be closed or existing only with physical structure but still not deleted from the list of the education department, according to vigilance sleuths.
Vigilance personnel have submitted two interim reports to the government which revealed violations ranging from bogus faculty to non-maintenance of balance sheets, no permission for college construction, attendance malpractices and fictitious claims. The department took up the probe following the directions of chief secretary Rajiv Sharma and conducted detailed inspections in private colleges regarding maintenance of tuition fee and reimbursement of tuition fee.
Inspections were conducted in Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy, Medak, Nalgonda, Karimnagar and Warangal districts. During the course of inquiry, inspecting teams found that most colleges have constructed buildings without permission and subsequently applied for building penalisation scheme. For instance, the team that inspected the Vivek-ananda Group of Inst-itutions observed, “The college is not running on sound lines as the ratio of intake of students and faculty is gradually decreasing, with fictitious students and faculty on rolls. This college, especially for 2015-16, claimed reimbursement of tuition fee and maintenance of tuition fee to the tune of Rs 3 crore.”
In case of SRL Institute of Pharmaceutical Science College, Madikonda in Hanamkonda the college management has claimed reimbursement of tuition fee towards dropout student Mr E Hari Babu who was admitted in 2013-14 and claimed money for two years. Tuition fee amounting to Rs 8.15 lakh was credited twice in the college account by the BC welfare department and the management has not returned the amount. The vigilance department recommended the recovery of the money and disciplinary action against BC welfare department officials.
In most of the colleges, salary to the faculty is being paid by cash and it is observed that in some colleges faculty has been recently recruited only to comply with the norms for purposes of inspection. Colleges also prepared new attendance register of students for 2014-15 academic year for the purpose of inspection. Though 75 per cent attendance is mandatory, college managements are forwarding the applications for the sanction of reimbursement of tuition fee by manipulating attendance. Most of the colleges are not deducting professional tax from the salaries of the staff, not submitting Form-16 to IT departments and not maintaining balance sheets to reflect the financial functioning of the colleges. This will lead to major loss of revenue for the government.
