Govt body seeks President's permission to audit Jamia Hamdard University

NEW DELHI: If Jamia Millia Islamia is locked in a legal battle with the Centre over its minority status, it is now the turn of Jamia Hamdard to come on the radar of the country’s auditor.

The office of the Director General of Audit (Central Expenditure), or DGACE, has written to the HRD ministry seeking special sanction of the President of India to enable them to audit the accounts of Jamia Hamdard, ET has learnt.

The approval has been sought as the rulebook does not permit auditing unless the government funds 75% expenditure of an organisation.


The HRD ministry had sent Jamia Hamdard accounts of the last five years to DGACE, which after studying them concluded that the institute cannot be covered under section 14(1).

Section 14(1) of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (Duties, Powers and Conditions of Service) Amendment ACT, 1971, does not apply in case of Jamia Hamdard as it receives only about Rs 8 crore annually from UGC, while its total expenditure is more than Rs 100 crore.

Therefore, DGACE is learnt to have requested the ministry to obtain presidential sanction for auditing under section 14(2). This section says that CAG can audit an organisation which receives more than Rs 1 crore as government funding in a financial year, provided the President sanctions such a request. An audit under section 14(2) is requested only when the government suspects fraud or major financial irregularities.

While the HRD ministry did not respond to ET queries, ministry sources confirmed to ET that they had received such a communication from DGACE and the request was under examination.

DGACE Mamta Kundra told ET that a decision on auditing would involve long processes, including a go ahead from the finance ministry and a presidential sanction that the HRD ministry would have to look into. She said all due procedures will be followed. Sources in UGC also said that an audit of a deemed university under section 14(2) is not common.

Jamia Hamdard’s vice-chancellor Seyed E Hasnain told ET that there is no cause for an audit of this nature.

“It is for the HRD ministry to decide if such an approval for an audit should be taken from the President. Since we have an expenditure of about `125 crore annually and this deemed university gets about `8 crore per annum from UGC, the audit regime does not apply to us. I do not think there is any such cause for them to seek presidential sanction to do so in case of Jamia Hamdard,” the VC told ET.

Jamia Hamdard is a deemed to be university accredited Grade A by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council. It offers four distinct graduate courses and runs nine schools ranging from life sciences to pharmaceuticals and Unani medicine.

The present day Jamia Hamdard was inaugurated by the then PM Rajiv Gandhi after it was accorded deemed university status in 1989. Its beginnings are traced to 1906 with a small Unani clinic by Hakeem Hafiz Abdul Majeed. He set up a Wakf, with the object of giving effect to Islamic teachings of public charity, including health and education, in 1948.