West Bengal calls for to see financial institution statements of aided faculties; establishments see transfer as blow to autonomy

“The Finance Department has launched Fund Information System (FIS) portal from monetary 12 months 2025-26 and it’s necessary to offer checking account particulars and FD particulars to get any monetary help from the State Government,” mentioned a communication from the Department of Higher Education circulated earlier this week.

The faculties should not uncomfortable with the tone of the letter, that sharing account particulars was vital in an effort to obtain monetary help from the State Government, one thing that they really feel is an assault on their autonomy.

“The State Government is lowering the funds for training in all sectors. Recruitment of academics has been halted. Research funds are crunched. Universities are autonomous our bodies which have raised assets for a very long time by means of their analysis, advocacy and industry-institute partnership programmes. This transfer is simply to siphon off these assets to the federal government for no motive. This is an assault on monetary and educational autonomy of state academic establishments. This will additional deprive the scholars, who’re already affected by delayed admission and lack of funds,” mentioned Ishita Mukhopadhyay, a widely known professor of economics on the University of Calcutta, including that a number of academics’ associations had already expressed their anger in opposition to the transfer.

An Associate Orofessor with a Kolkata school who didn’t need to be recognized mentioned: “The State Government is already taking half of the overall tuition charges collected in a 12 months. This notification makes us imagine that the corpus fund of schools in type of mounted deposits and financial institution balances could be taken away by. The faculties want such funds for varied growth initiatives like development of latest buildings, renovation and restore, extensions of current buildings, conduct of occasions, significantly when the UGC hardly extends any monetary assist prefer it did earlier than until the twelfth Plan.”