Recently a fraud worth over Rs 57 lakhs was detected by a central expenditure audit team by over 100 JNU officials. This fraud in JNU was regarding claiming leave travel concessions and reimbursements of phone bills during fiscal year 2017-18.
The Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi has started a probe into this JNU fraud matter after having a communication by the office of Director General of Audit (central expenditure) over the fraud on the basis of either fake travel bill or unauthorized reimbursements.
This matter was put in the Executive Council meeting of the varsity. The EC is apprised of the matter and is looking into it, and those found defaulters will be asked to pay, shared a senior JNU official on the condition of anonymity.
The JNU official was silent on the matter of DGCAE’s recommendation of lodging a criminal case against the employees of the university who are involved in the fraud.
A Kota based transparency activist, Sujeet Swami filed a plea asking seeking details of complete audit and inspection reports of New Delhi’s JNU and Jamai MIlia Islamiafor fiscals 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20. It is then when the entire fraud matter came to light in February this year in DGCAE’s response to his plea.
Under the Right to Information Act, DGCAE supplied the audit reports to the swami , in response to his plea fro the two central universities that too for juts the year 2017-18. They said the audits for 2018-19 and the year 2019-20 were yet to be conducted.
Reportedly, DGCAE found in the audit report of 2017-18, that 34 JNU officials had availed their LTCs on the basis of fake bills which amount up to Rs 52.52 lakh for ar travels to Andaman and Nicobar Island and Gangtok by Air India, procured from a private travel agency.
The DGCAE pointed out that even the entire act of booking of tickets through a private agency was in breach of the officials’ service and conduct rules.
DGCAE also reported that 70 JNU employees had claimed reimbursements worth five lakhs on mobile phones purchased by them and payable to the mobile telephony service bills despite not even being entitled to them.
DGCAE has asked JNU to receive the unauthorized reimbursement amount form the 70 officials and to suspend their 34 employees and also lodge a criminal case against them for availing LTCs on the basis of fake travel bills.
