Govt orders probe into Nysa ‘scam’ at MDU

Sunit Dhawan

Tribune News Service

Rohtak, January 7

The Haryana Government has ordered an inquiry into the alleged irregularities in the functioning of Nysa Communications and its sub-contractor, which were engaged for post-examination work like preparation of marksheets at Maharshi Dayanand University (MDU) here.

Haryana Additional Chief Secretary (Higher Education) Vijai Vardhan told The Tribune that a three-member committee had been constituted to probe the matter .

The committee would visit the MDU, Rohtak, on January 12 and meet all stakeholders, including the university faculty, students and other officials, and submit its report thereafter,” the ACS disclosed.

The committee comprises Hemant Verma, Arun Joshi (both Deputy Directors at the Department of Higher Education, Haryana) and MS Malik, a former professor of commerce at MDU, revealed Vardhan.

The action comes after a news report published in these columns today .

The news report pointed out that the MDU authorities had engaged Nysa Communications, a private company, for post-examination work like the preparation of mark-sheets during the tenure of the previous Congress regime in the state.

MDU officials point out that while the same work was earlier being done by a local service-provider for about Rs 20 per student, this company charged more than Rs 200 per student for the job.

Informed sources said the company had already been paid nearly Rs 20 crore while Rs 10 crore was in the pipeline and the payment of another Rs 10 crore had been intentionally stopped by the MDU authorities.

Even after the work contract of the said company was terminated around two years ago, it allegedly continued to armtwist the university authorities as the students’ record was in its possession.

An emergency meeting of the MDU Executive Council was called yesterday, and the top item on its agenda was “Assignment of post-examination work to Alliance Data Matics, a sub-contractor of Nysa Communications”. However, the state government stopped the MDU authorities from taking any action against the company.

Punia takes over as Vice-Chancellor

Prof Bijender Kumar Punia (in pic) assumed charge as the Vice-Chancellor of Maharshi Dayanand University (MDU) here on Thursday. Punia was a professor at the Haryana School of Business, and Director, Academic Staff College, Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology (GJUST), Hisar, prior to his appointment as the MDU Vice-Chancellor. He has been appointed VC for three years by Haryana Governor-cum-MDU Chancellor Kaptan Singh Solanki . With this, the longstanding demand of the MDU Teachers Association (MDUTA) has been fulfilled. The MDUTA president, Dr Ashwani Dhingra, has welcomed the appointment of Prof Punia as a regular Vice-Chancellor and expressed hope that the university system would function in a smooth manner and the pressing concerns of the teaching fraternity, students as well as officials would get addressed. MDU Registrar Jitender Bhardwaj, other senior functionaries and faculty members welcomed Professor Punia. —TNS