Pune: In its first full senate meeting after implementation of the Maharashtra Public Universities Act 2016, the Savitribai Phule Pune University constituted a committee to look into what went wrong in the case of Sinhgad institutes and to make sure that such mistakes are not repeated in other colleges.

Taking view of the problem at the Sinhgad group of institutes where teachers have not been paid salaries for several months, vice chancellor Nitin Karmalkar said, “A committee will be constituted to study what went wrong and to suggest recommendations. This will be used so that a similar problem is not replicated at other colleges.”

Representatives of teachers from Sinhgad institutes, however, proposed that an administrator be appointed so that admission fees received from students next year are diverted towards payment of pending salaries of teachers and non-teaching staff.

Chaotic scenes were witnessed from the beginning of the meeting.

The election of some members of the management council was pending which was to be held outside the senate hall. However, when the director of higher education, Dhanraj Mane, objected to it, the elections were held in the senate hall. There was a heated exchange of words for half-an-hour during the post-lunch session as members insisted on a question-answer session. But the VC intervened using the power vested in him under the MPU Act and declared that the budget will be read first, followed by the question-answer round.

Bhagyashree Manthalkar raised the issue of students over-staying in the university’s hostel. Karmalkar said the issue is serious and that changes would be made to the rules related to hostel admission to ensure that such problems do not arise in future.

Senate members Sanjay Kharat and V B Gaikwad raised the problems related to DBT scheme of scholarships. “Last year, there was a major problem as initially the university insisted on online filling of forms, then, the server crashed and the entire process had to be done offline which led to a tedious procedure. Now, the money will be directly transferred to the students’ accounts. Our problem is how to get the tuition fee and other things back from them once the amount is deposited. What if the students take reimbursement and leave the college? The government should deposit colleges’ portion in the colleges’ accounts and students’ portion in their accounts,” said Gaikwad.

