The North-Eastern Hill University Teachers’ Association (NEHUTA) today accused under fire Vice-Chancellor PS Shukla of gross financial wrongdoing in relation to the university’s Tura campus.
Shukla has been on leave since November after coming up against intense and sustained protests over his running of NEHU.
Today, NEHUTA cited two instances of supposed irregular activity by Shukla and “so-called” Tura campus director Sujata Gurudev. The teachers’ association said that the appointment of Gurudev, a professor, as campus director is “unstatutory, arbitrary and patently irregular” according to the NEHU Act and Statutes.
According to NEHUTA, Shukla and Gurudev have chosen non-local companies to initiate work on the Tura campus without following due process.
NEHU’s building committee met last on October 16, 2024 and decided to award Tata’s prefabricated building business NEST-IN a Rs 1.84 crore contract to build the NEHU Tura food testing laboratory without first floating a tender on the Central Public Procurement Portal (CPPP), NEHUTA said, adding that the second case is worth much more money, namely Rs 92.31 crore.
This involved several projects that were also approved by the building committee. They fall under a central government scheme called the Pradhan Mantri Jan Vikas Karyakram (PMJVK) under the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs.
“The scheme is an area development programme under which community infrastructure and basic amenities are being created in the identified areas which is supposed to be implemented under the aegis of the state governments/Union territory (UT). Surprisingly, the DPR (detailed project report) was prepared by the Manipur Tribal Development Corporation Ltd (MTDC) which was selected by the Tura campus as an outsourced agency to carry out the construction of two boys hostels, two girls hostels and an auditorium of 1,000 capacity” at NEHU Tura, the NEHUTA press release stated.
The association questioned why a state-owned company from Manipur should be given such an important role in this project and whether the MTDC had sought permissions from the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC) to work in the area under the latter’s jurisdiction. It also queried how the work order was handed to the MTDC in September, a month before the building committee sat. NEHUTA also wanted to know where the call for tenders had been advertised as it is mandatory for such projects to go through the CPPP.
Nominations of agencies can only be done without tendering in the case of an emergency but this does not apply in these two cases, NEHUTA argued.
Although Shukla is on leave due to his battles against teachers and students, Gurudev has, NEHUTA says, been given temporary charge of the Tura campus and has been trying to push through these projects quickly.
