Higher Education Department constitutes panel to clear pending audit objections in varsities

The Higher Education Department has set up a ‘State high-level committee’ to clear pending local fund audit (LFA) objections in the 13 universities under its purview.  

Each university’s registrar and finance officer will be on the committee. 

The committee will have five members, besides a special invitee and a member-secretary. They will report to the Higher Education Secretary, who will be the chairperson of the committee. 

The LFA director will be the member secretary and the regional or deputy director of the LFA will be a special invitee. The assistant director of LFA concerned will be a member. The additional/joint/deputy secretary will be a member. The registrars and finance officers of the university concerned will be the other members. The finance secretary would depute a representative, not below the rank of deputy secretary to the government, as a member.  

The committee shall monitor the audit and submission of the annual accounts and audit reports of the universities; review and suggest to V-C/syndicate on appropriate action to be taken; sanction special audits based on LFA reports or complaints; recommend recovery of losses and recommend to the government on dropping of audit para requiring the government’s approval. 

The registrars of the universities concerned, who are also members of the committee, shall be solely responsible for the pending audit paras and must ensure that the committee’s directions are implemented. 

According to an order issued by the department on Thursday the committee will meet every quarter. The LFA would require prior approval of the committee’s chairperson to relieve any person from an objection.  

The G.O. pointed out that most of the audit objections related to establishment matters such as pay anomaly, wrong promotions and pay fixation, career advancement, resulting in retirees not being provided their retirement benefits.  

The formulation of the committee was based on a letter from the registrar of Alagappa University, which stated that there were 1,438 audit objections pending since 1985-86 till 2019-20 of which 50% were related to establishment matters. The university also said the system of joint sitting with regional director of LFA did not “yield the expected outcome of settlement of objections.” 

The special director of LFA, Chennai, had suggested in his letter to the Higher Education Department that a high level committee was appropriate since many universities came under the purview of the department “as in the case of local bodies, namely municipal administration and water supplies department and rural development and panchayat raj department.”