Dec. 17: In a new twist to the financial irregularity baffling Gauhati University (GU), teachers and employees of the university today claimed that a recent fire at the State Bank of India (SBI) branch on the campus could be a sabotage attempt to destroy records and evidences.
The Co-ordination Committee of GU Teachers and Employees, which is spearheading a movement against the series of scams involving crores of rupees, today demanded an inquiry to identify the exact cause of the fire.
Chief manager of the SBI branch, Abani Mohan Saharia, also did not rule out the sabotage angle when contacted by The Telegraph.
Earlier, committee members had quoted the manager as saying that the fire had touched the record room.
?The SBI branch suspended all transactions for three days after the fire. So there are enough reasons to believe that the fire had caused substantial damage in the bank. The university as well as the public have the right to know what went wrong in the bank on Monday, the day the fire took place,? A. Rahman, spokesperson for the co-ordination committee, said.
The fire incident gains more significance as it broke out after the state government last week agreed to a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the GU scams.
Rahman said the co-ordination committee would stage a dharna and demonstration in front of the meeting venue for the executive council of the GU tomorrow. ?We will stage the demonstration to protest the apathetic attitude of the university authority to pursue the matter of instituting a CBI probe with Dispur,? he said.
?We are under an impression that the GU authority is not at all interested in a CBI probe,? he said.
The university scams involved misappropriation of funds for remuneration of teachers for evaluation of answerscripts and other external duties, purchase of library materials, including books and anomalies in the construction of the Vidhi Vidya Bhavan.
Some employees of the GU had fraudulently withdrawn lakhs of rupees from the university funds meant for remuneration of teachers for evaluation of answer scripts and other external duties from the SBI branch at the university campus.
The chief minister, who had assured the co-ordination committee last week to institute a CBI inquiry, has asked the commissioner-cum-secretary of the home department, B.K. Gohain, to clear all formalities of approaching the investigating agency within December.
?The malpractice and corruption are adversely hurting the image of the university and if steps are not initiated, it will lose the moral right to check its affiliated units,? a member of the co-ordination committee said. ?We will discuss these issues and more in our Gauhati University Teachers Association meeting this week,? he said.
