Bhubaneswar, Sept. 19: The directorate of higher education is conducting surprise checks on junior and degree colleges across the state to monitor and evaluate their performance.

Salaries of teachers and non-teaching employees of Balugaon College, Khurda, have been stopped from this month for failing to maintain proper official accounts. A team of government officials, led by higher education director Gangadhar Mishra, has taken the decision. The team inspected 11 colleges in various parts of the state over the past five days and taken action against the erring authorities.

“The money-collection register has not been maintained since June 21. Admissions were held after that date and the college must have collected money from students. Unless the principal submits the details of all the money collected, the employees’ salaries will not be released,” said Mishra, adding that he had also taken note of attendance irregularities at the P.N. (Autonomous) College, Khurda.

The colleges are being evaluated on the basis of “common minimum standard”, which includes various parameters such as maintaining minimum student attendance, library facility, record of teachers’ profile, campus infrastructure update and extra-curricular activities among others.

The team also visited a few other colleges in Khurda and some in Balasore, Bhadrak, Baripada and Ganjam districts. During its visit to BJB (Autonomous) College here, Mishra said he had found “many a chink under the cake of plaster”.

The performance monitoring team will tour colleges en route to Keonjhar tomorrow and in and around Cuttack the day after. Sambalpur colleges can expect the surprise inspection on September 24.

The directorate has written to principals of all government and non-government colleges to regularly inspect classes, complete course on time, collect feedback from students and assess their progress on a daily basis to streamline the higher education system.