Darbhanga, July 15: Lalit Narayan Mithila University (LNMU) has been burdened with excessive Grade III and IV employees who work in posts at its headquarters not legally sanctioned by the state government.

LNMU has to pay salaries to these illegally appointed employees from its internal resources, as there is no allocation for paying them.

LNMU registrar Bimal Kumar told The Telegraph: “On the directives of the state government and the Patna High Court, services of 196 employees was regularised in 2005 against vacant seats in LNMU. As the university was getting consolidated funds for paying these employees earlier, there was no problem in keeping them. But now the state government sanctions funds against each college and the university headquarters separately.” He added: “All employees do not want to leave the university headquarters for colleges and their payment does not come to the university headquarters. This has put us into trouble.”

According to the Bihar State University Act, 1976, the university cannot create any teaching or non-teaching post without the prior approval of the state government. The Act states that under Section 35, no post for appointment shall be created without the prior sanction of the state government, while its sub-section says once the Act came into force, no teaching or non-teaching post involving financial liabilities could be created without the prior approval of the state government.”

Overlooking the legal provisions made under Bihar State University Act, 1976, LNMU came up with open vacancies for Grade III and IV employees and conducted interviews of around 4,000 employees. On June 6, 2004, only 196 candidates were selected out of casual workers who were already working in the university for long, while the other candidates did not find any place.

Sources said that even these employees were selected the varsity did not consider to get approval of their appointment from the state government. Not getting any budget against these posts, the university has been incurring a financial deficit of Rs 15 lakh every month.

Tej Narayan Yadav, an orderly in the philosophy department of LNMU, told The Telegraph that he had challenged the appointment of all 196 employees in the high court because no sanctioned post was vacant at the time they were appointed in 2004 and their service was being counted since their date of joining as casual workers 31 years ago.

Once few employees in different colleges under LNMU retired, some seats fell vacant. From time to time, LNMU tried to adjust these excessive employees in those colleges, but failed to do so.