Sandeep Ashar, TNN, Dec 17, 2010,
MUMBAI: Officials from the Mumbai University spent more than a crore in setting up an Olympic-sized swimming pool on its Kalina campus but forgot an important detail: a filtration plant to pump water in the pool.
An audit conducted by the office of the state government's principal accountant general (audit) into accounts of the university has found holes in the way the institution went about setting up the pool.
The Olympic-sized swimming pool is a part of an ambitious project of construction of a modern-day sports complex inside the campus to encourage sporting talent.
The completion of the Rs 2- crore complex, which was also to house an athletics track, a tennis and badminton court and squash courts among other facilities, has been pushed back from 2008 to 2011.
Even as university officials quoted paucity of funds for the delay, the auditors have found procedural lapses.
An inspection report of the audit exercise, which was conducted between July and August last year, was disclosed last week under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The RTI query was filed by social activist Vihar Durve.
TOI has access to the report.
Vice-chancellor Rajan Welukar, when contacted, said "he was outside office". Officials he referred TOI to refused to comment. The swimming pool work began in March 2006. Welukar took over as vice-chancellor this year.
The swimming pool was to be completed originally in 24 months (by 2008) but the work is not yet over. After inspection, the auditors ruled that the "amount paid so far to the contractors appointed for the work had been unfruitful". While Rs 1.31 crore was set aside for the pool work, the contractor had been paid Rs 1.24 crore by March 2009. The auditors found that while the original scope of pool work included the construction of the filtration plant, this was missing at the time when the estimates were prepared.
"No separate tender for the filtration plant was invited either," the audit note says.
The auditors also chided the university for hoarding money released by the state government for various welfare and scholarship grants for students and teachers. The report cites instances when the released grants were underutilized or overdrawn. The university was also pulled up for failure to present audit accounts for the financial years 2006-07 and 2007-08 in time.
The completion of the Rs 2- crore sports complex has been pushed back from 2008 to 2011
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