Patna, Feb. 17: Two senior officials of the Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar Bihar University in Muzaffarpur, including the director of distance education, were today suspended on the directive of the governor-cum-chancellor of universities Ram Nath Kovind.

Departmental proceedings were also initiated against Shivji Singh (director) and Lalan Kumar (administrative officer) of the university's distance education course. Both have been found guilty of running the distance education course without the approval of any competent authority.

An official said the university authorities had been running courses at the distance education centre in violation of the prescribed norms laid down by the University Grants Commission (UGC). The governor's secretariat issued an order today, asking acting vice-chancellor of the university Ravindra Kumar Verma Ravi to comply with the chancellor's directive.

Sources in the university said over 2,400 students were enrolled in the MPhil course through its distance education centre in the academic sessions 2014-15 and 2015-16. University registrar Ratnesh Kumar Mishra was earlier removed from the post and senior teacher Ajay Kumar Srivastava was asked to assume charge as registrar.

Srivastava, a professor in the department of English, today assumed charge. Yesterday, the outgoing registrar had to face the ire of a group of students. The students snatched 20 files from him and later submitted them to the acting vice-chancellor.

The students accused the outgoing registrar and then vice-chancellor Pandit Prabhakar Palande of being equally responsible for irregularities in the distance course.

Harendra Kumar, a member of the university syndicate, said the students had been charged anything between Rs 25,000 and Rs 30,000 each to take admission in the MPhil course.

The matter came to the fore when some students sought the intervention of the chancellor's office in Patna last year. The chancellor later ordered a probe by a committee, which detected large-scale irregularities.