For the first time in its 167-year history, the University of Madras will not pay salaires to its employees on the first day of the month. A university official said the institution would pay the employees by Saturday.
The University, an affiliating body for 136 colleges in the three districts of Chennai, Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur, is mired in financial difficulties as the Income Tax department has demanded ₹424 crore towards IT dues, pending for the years 2017-18 to 2020-21.
On February 4, the IT department froze the university’s bank accounts, including 37 fixed deposits, embarrassing the institution as it could not honour the dozens of cheques it had issued. The university does not have a Vice-Chancellor either and administration is done by a four-member committee headed by the higher education secretary.
The University’s financial woes are due to the government suspending annual grants for the past seven years citing audit objections by the Local Fund Audit office. All faculty who retired after 2017 are yet to receive their retirement settlements. Only their pension is being disbursed currently, officials admitted.
The staff had gone on a daylong fast on Feb. 23 to attract the attention of the higher education authorities. On Thursday, the Joint Action Committee of Madras University Faculty and Staff Unions announced an indefinite strike from Friday if the salaries are not disbursed.
A former professor said, “The last working day of the month is the appointed day for payment of pension and salaries to staff (except in March, which happens to be the last day of the financial year).” C. Murugan, president of the Madras University Teachers Association, said the institution had around 200 faculty, 400 non-teaching staff and 700 temporary employees currently.
Former university professors are speculating that the University had the option of dipping into its pension corpus of over ₹300 crore but they also point out that the money would vanish if the University does not find a way to replenish the corpus that it had built over a period of many decades.
