NEW DELHI: Facing flak in the last few days, more distress seems to be in store for UGC chairman S K Thorat with the Central Vigilance Fee registering a complaint against him on a series of allegations ranging from his involvement in pushing through Rs 224 crore e-governance project, corruption in accord of deemed university status and misusing UGC’s resources to run his own institute Indian Institute of Dalit Studies.
CVC had on Development 31 questioned HRD ministry to investigate and submit a report on the issue within three months. Questioned in this area the complaint, Thorat confirmed it and said it pertained to the four issues to which the ministry must have answered to the CVC. Though, the complainant, Raju Sharma, former secretary of UGC, who was unceremoniously removed from the fee, said he was yet to receive any communication from the CVC.
Meanwhile, UGC has been questioned to review the infrastructure, academic quality and other parameters of deemed universities that came up in the past five years.
Though Thorat claims that there is no basis to the allegations, sources said the e-governance project — that was place on hold at the last minute due to media reports — still incurred an expenditure of a few crores in hiring consultants and other things.
As reported by TOI last month, CVC had in January relentlessly indicted UGC for flouting all norms and not being transparent in the e-governance project, which entailed networking of institutions of higher learning. CVC had questioned UGC that the “process needs to be reviewed and made more professional and transparent in order to avoid complications later”. It had said, “The total value of the project may not have been correctly estimated and may be on the higher side.”
CVC had suggested that the project “can be managed better” by starting on a less vital extent and expanded later. It had gone to the extent of saying that it did not “ordinarily interfere in the tendering process”, but added that “it may not be prudent for the UGC to go ahead with the project in its present form”.
Though UGC had denied CVC’s contention in this area specific omissions and discrepancies, CVC had said there was no justification in extending the last date for submitting proposals when 19 of them had already come by the last date.
CVC had also said extension of the closing date was not advertised in newspapers and only place on UGC’s website. UGC had justified it on the ground that this had helped in view of the fact that the number of proposals had gone up to 26. UGC also said it was due to lack of time that extension was told only on the website.
CVC also said that two of the seven broad parameters on the basis of which five out of 26 proposals were shortlisted were not found in the notice inviting the tender. UGC, though, justified the go on the ground that it was done by the expert committee and applied uniformly to all 26 bidders.