PAU yet to get Rs 100 crore from Centre

Chandigarh, Oct 24 (UNI) Eight months after the Centre's Rs 100 crore budgetary allocation for the Punjab Agriculture University (PAU), the prestigious institution still awaits the grant.

The PAU had sent the draft proposals on utilisation of the grant to the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), which reportedly rejected the proposals on different grounds several times, recommending some changes.

Acknowledging the delay in the grant of the central funds, PAU Vice Chancellor Dr K S Aulakh told UNI that the ICAR initially had difference of opinion over the utilisation of the bunds as it rejected the creation of a corpus fund out of the grant.

''We have now finally sent another proposal to spend the entire Rs 100 crore on infrastructure and research in this very financial year as dictated by the ICAR,'' Dr Aulakh said.

The PAU management had initially proposed to spend Rs 21 crore of the total grant and deposit the rest Rs 79 crore as a corpus fund for future plans, to which the ICAR had raised an objection.

''But the matter now stands resolved as the Centre's Expenditures and Finance Committee (EFC) has given its nod to the grant,'' he said.

''We are expecting the money by November end,'' the Vice Chancellor said.

Dr Aulakh said he would again take up the matter with Union Finance minister P Chidambaram when the central minister presides over the PAU Convocation in Ludhiana on October 31.

He said that he had been called by the Union Finance Minister to Delhi in July to explain the utilisation of the Rs 100 crore grant.

A senior functionary of the PAU said, ''We are rather feeling harassed with a notion amongst the people that the PAU has been given Rs 100 crore, while the reality is that the draft proposals were being returned for changes time and again''.

Dr Aulakh said the final proposal, as per the ICAR recommendations now, comprised of expenditures on infrastructure which included the latest lad equipment and research work, with priorities to be given to bio-technology, post-harvest technology, crop residual management and the pest management.

He said Rs nine crore of the central grant would be spent on re-constructing the university's auditorium since it was built long back in 1961.

UNI PS MMS SAM RN1315