Amid conflict between the Delhi Government and 12 Delhi University colleges fully funded by it, the Delhi Government on Thursday released Rs 100 crore, the first quarter of the budget funds to these colleges. Addressing a press conference, Delhi Higher Education Minister Atishi on Thursday informed that there are 12 such colleges that are fully funded by the Delhi government. We allocated Rs 400 crore for these colleges and the first quarter of the fund of Rs 100 crore has been released today.
“The Delhi government has always prioritised the education sector and has always allocated the highest amount of funds to it. Since the Kejriwal Government came to power in Delhi, there has been an increase by more than 300% in the budget allocated to these colleges, which shows the government’s commitment to education,” she said.
According to the Delhi government, Rs 361 crore were allocated to these colleges during the Assembly budget in 2022-23, Rs 308 crore in 2021-22, Rs 265 crore in 2020-21, Rs 235 crore in 2019-20 Rs 213 crore in 2018-19, Rs 171 crore in 2017-18, Rs 156 crore in 2016-17, Rs 147 in 2015-16 and Rs 135 in 2014-15, “Our government has always prioritised the education sector and we have always allocated the highest amount of funds for the department during Assembly budgets,” Atishi said.
This year, an amount of Rs. 400 crores has been allocated to these 12 colleges so that they can establish better facilities for all the students studying in them.
She added that there are several universities in Delhi included in the higher education system of the Delhi government, including Ambedkar University, DTU, NSUT, DSEU, etc.
The Delhi government has earlier accused these 12 DU colleges of “gross financial mismanagement”, “corruption” and “ghost (unauthorised) recruitments”. However, despite three-level annual audits and special probes by the Delhi government, – including the latest one, the report on which will be released on February 2 – nothing concrete has been found to substantiate the government’s allegations, other than crores worth of accumulated student society funds, meant for student welfare activities, kept in fixed deposits by the concerned colleges.
The 12 fully-funded colleges are the Indira Gandhi Institute of Physical Education & Sports Science, Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, Shaheed Raj Guru College, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College, Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar College, Acharya Narendra Dev College, Bhagini Nivedita College, Keshav Maha Vidyalaya, Maharaja Agrasen College, Aditi Mahavidyalaya, Maharishi Balmiki College of Education and Bhaskaracharya College of Applied Science.