The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR ) has put on hold distribution of honorarium among the employees of CIMFR besides all other research wings and laboratories after suspected misuse of funds.
The director general also has directed all those employees who have been awarded honorarium against research projects to refund the gross payments that were made to them by March 31 / 2021in this regard.
The issue came to fore owing to an RTI made by activist Ramesh Rahi who had sought details of honorarium paid to the employees of the laboratories under the CISR.
It has come to fore that in some cases the honorarium released by the employees were much much higher than their annual pay compensation that they were paid as government employees of any of the laboratories.
In one case an employee was paid over Rs 2 crores as honorarium that was claimed as constancy charges and royalty here at CIMFR . Surprisingly those not associated with any research too have been awarded the same. The CIMFR has paid more than Rs 17.5 crores in the last five years against this head here .
Rahi said , when the scientists are getting hefty pay compensations from the government for their work, realising honorarium appears to be a financial irregularity.
When contacted CIMFR spokesperson Dr Siddharth Singh said, the CSIR has put a hold on the payment of monies and honorarium till further notice.
The practice of paying honorarium is an old one, thus those eligible used to get it.However,after the directive from DG it has been stopped.