CSA RESEARCH ASSISTANTS APPOINTMENT ILLEGAL: AUDIT

KANPUR: The local audit and finance control office has found the appointment of 48 research assistants at the CA Azad University of Agriculture and Technology between 1987 and 1999 as illegal.

The department has red flagged the entire process and asked the university to recover ₹7 crore paid in wages and other heads from the research assistants. Each assistant has to pay ₹15 lakh, said the audit report of the department, which functions under the state auditor and finance controller office.

Dr Munish Gangwar, director, administration, of the university said the varsity would seek legal advice and act accordingly.

“We haven’t received the report yet. It will be studied and the university will take decision as per rules,” he said.

The report says the positions of research assistants were scrapped in 1987 yet the appointments were made.

The 48 research assistants were employed with academic grade pay (AGP) of ₹7000, ₹8000 and ₹9000. The entire process was wrong and illegal, said the report. It further points out that the university did not follow the rules and the posts were not advertised.

The research assistants, who are now working in capacity of assistant teachers, would challenge the report in high court.

This is not the first time the university has been hit with irregularities in appointments.

Before this report, governor Ram Naik had sacked vice chancellor Munna Singh Chauhan for anomalies in appointment of teachers in October 2016.

He was indicted in two separate inquiries by former judges of Allahabad high court.

Chauhan was earlier suspended in May 2015 after 75 university teachers, MPs and MLAs had complained to the governor about large scale irregularities in appointments.

One of the assistant teachers J Roy said he and many others had called on the vice chancellor but the issue hasn’t been resolved. “Now we will move the high court to seek redressal,” he said.