TWIN TROUBLE: Atish and Asim Dasgupta

A college managed by finance minister Asim Dasgupta’s twin brother is facing unrest because of his department’s practice of clearing the salary bills of state-aided educational institutes once a quarter rather than every month.

Teachers of BKC (Brahmananda Keshab Chandra) College at Barasat, in North 24-Parganas, have not been taking classes or reporting for examination duty since Friday in protest against the authorities’ failure to ensure timely payment of salaries.

According to an aggrieved teacher, he and his colleagues had to make do with a part payment of Rs 10,000 each on May 1 against their salaries for April. “But we haven’t received a paisa in June, ” said Biswajit Dey, the librarian.

Atish Dasgupta, the president of the governing body and the finance minister’s sibling, admitted that the college coffers were empty.

“We understand the problem faced by our teachers. We are doing the needful to solve their problem,” he said.

West Bengal State University, to which BKC College is affiliated, has been facing difficulty conducting the ongoing undergraduate examinations because of the agitation. The problem of delayed salaries is, however, not restricted to the Barasat college.

Nearly 400 state-aided colleges and 12,000 schools across Bengal receive funds from the government for payment of salaries once every three months. In many of these institutions, teachers and other employees receive their salaries only when the government releases funds.

Sources in the finance department said there was no known reason for releasing monthly grants to educational institutions quarterly. “The only thing I know is that this system has been followed for decades,” an official said.

Some schools and colleges do manage with funds generated internally while a few, including BKC College, have an arrangement with the staff to pay a portion of the salaries every month and the balance when the government grants arrive.

“We condemn the college authorities’ decision to stop making the part payment of Rs 10,000 every month that was promised to us. We are also angry with the government for repeatedly delaying the release of salary grants to state-aided colleges like ours,” said Gangabrata Mukherjee, who teaches molecular biology at BKC.

Principal Ajay Kumar Dev Gupta said there was little he could do until the government released funds. “We do not have the resources to make even a part payment of Rs 10,000 each to the teachers. This is a crisis that we can solve only with the government’s help,” he added.

The government last released funds to BKC College in April, with which the authorities paid the teachers their salaries for March.