RGUHS brushing off scams happening under its nose: BJP legislator Ashwath Naraya

 The Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) is “ridden with irregularities” but its officials are looking the other way, Malleswaram MLA Dr C N Ashwath Narayan, who is also a senate member of the varsity, has claimed.

Addressing reporters here on Tuesday, the BJP legislator said that over the past years, several discrepancies in the examination and admission procedure had come to light but the university hadn’t taken any action. For instance, earlier this year, an answer paper scam that came to fore. Even after the Central Crime Branch (CCB) of the Bengaluru police confirmed the tampering, the RGUHS didn’t take any effort to probe other courses where malpractice could have occurred. The scam has a wider ambit but the RGUHS was satisfied with only probing the answer scripts of the postgraduate course, though more malpractice happened at the MBBS level. Then, the admission process itself is not transparent every year, Narayan said.

Audit report

There is also gross misappropriation in the management of the university’s finances. “The university has huge funds but the transactions haven’t been audited for years. After repeated requests, auditing was taken up for the financial year 2010-11 and the findings were shocking. Auditing for remaining years is still in progress,” he said.

According to this audit report, Rs 99 lakh meant for HELINET digital library have been kept as fixed deposit in a bank without proper sanction. From 1996 onwards, the cash under objections raised by the RGUHS is over Rs 134 crore and the university hasn’t taken any steps to settle this matter. The previous registrar owes over Rs 20 lakhs to the RGUHS, Narayan alleged.

Nursing education

Another area where things are murky is nursing education. “With nearly 300 nursing colleges in Bengaluru alone, hardly half of them get good admissions. The rest are struggling but the university hasn’t done anything. A subcommittee was formed to look into illegal admissions during 2013-14, but the university hasn’t done anything beyond. There is rampant sanction of nursing exam centres that facilitate mass copying,” he added.

The MLA said he has posted relevant documents to back his claims on his website drashwath.in.