Vimal Jyothi Engineering College row: Performance fine' tops list
3.8 lakh was paid back by students who availed conditional fee concession.
Chemberi (Kannur): An audit report on the miscellaneous income and expenditure of Vimal Jyothi Engineering College, Chemberi, Kannur, states that the college collected a fine of Rs 9.73 lakh in 2015-16. Of this, a sum of Rs 2.52 lakh was collected from students as part of disciplinary action while Rs 3.80 lakh was paid by students who had availed conditional fee concession, according to the audit report which DC accessed. “Up to 20 meritorious students from poor financial background get scholarships every year in the form of partial or full waiver of fee which amounts to Rs 75,000 a year,” college administrator Fr Jinu Vadakkemulanjanal told DC.
“Some even get free education which includes hostel fee. But we ask them to pay back if they fail in the university examination. The fine of Rs 3.25 lakh is on this account.” The students get back the money whenever they clear the backlog papers, he said. Parent-teacher association (PTA) secretary M. Vasudevan Nair said the amount students paid back was included in the ‘fine head’ which created the confusion while PTA executive committee member A.P. Thajuddeen said all the crucial decisions were taken by the management after presenting it before the PTA.
“The allegation that we have imposed hefty fines on students as a disciplinary tool has no basis,” Fr Vadakkemulanjanal said. “The issue was fanned out of proportion without verifying the facts which were available in the public domain.”
Students who received scholarship under the scheme confirmed its conditional nature to DC. M.Tech student P.K. Sangeetha, who completed her B.Tech on scholarship at Vimal Jyothi, said she did not pay fine for academic failure but several of her classmates did. “I got Rs 35,000 scholarship for four years,” she said. “We had to sign a document while receiving the scholarship that there is a penalty for poor academic performance.”
It is a mechanism to ensure that the bright students who bagged the scholarship continue to perform, according to Jijo Joseph, a former student completed studies on scholarship and now employed in Kochi. The SFI, which was in the forefront of student agitation, however, refused to accept the management version. “The management is coming out with these figures when they were caught on the wrong foot,” SFI Kannur district secretary Muhammed Afzal told DC. “Fine is not the only issue we have raised. We want the management not to curtail the basic freedom the students should have on a campus.”