On the 30th of October, an email was sent out by the Corroboration and Review Committee and the Election Commission notifying the General Body of flagrant violations of the Procedure Manual and the Studentsā Union Constitution by the President and the General Secretary of the Studentsā Union. The email was issued as a formal warning to the President, Bharatharatna Puli, and the General Secretary, Shivam Jindal and mentioned three instances of them bypassing the CRC to process payments. āAlthough these violations imply no financial wrongdoing on the behalf of the office bearers, it is the first time elected representatives have flagrantly violated the Procedure Manualā, said a member of the Election Commission.
On the three occasions mentioned in the email, the office bearers approached the Dean, SWD directly and took the signed letter to the Accounts division, effectively bypassing the CRC. āNo action has been taken against Puli and Jindal apart from the warning mail due to the fact that Oasis was drawing near and we could not afford to take risksā, said the CRC. The Dean, SWD, has been asked to sign only on payment requests submitted by the CRC to prevent such occurrences in the future. The CRC also suspected something was amiss after it was reported that Jindal had samples of apparel in his possession prior to the email inviting quotes was sent out to vendors, but EC claimed to have no knowledge of this. However, Jindal had contacted multiple vendors early on in the semester in a bid to get inventory delivered before the fest. āThis was the first time the Oasis apparel was brought in and distributed before Oasis beganā, said the General Secretary.
āThese payments were ones that had to be made. They werenāt payments that the StuCCA, SU or the CRC were unaware of. If a payment happens without the knowledge of the CRC and there is no context to the payment, only then can we accuse the dealings of being shady. However, violating the Constitution is a very serious offence and further violations could lead to termination of officeā, said a member of the Election Commission. The Election Commission added that members of the StuCCA complained of the CRC being complacent in attending meets and getting work done. āThe CRC representative was accused of having left midway through the StuCCA meet in order to prepare for mid-semester examinations while the apparel tender was being finalisedā, the EC spokesperson said.
The President and General Secretary claimed that āa lack of time and slack from the authoritiesā forced them to take matters into their own hands to get payments processed without the CRC involved. āThe DVM reimbursement issue happened just before midsems when CRC was āunavailableā. There was nobody to sign on the documents. The bills that we have submitted are proper IGST bills and all finances have been accounted forā, said Puli. CRC stated that they were unaware of the reimbursements being made in the middle of the semester.
āI think itās the responsibility of each body mentioned in the charter to attend relevant meets. If you have made a commitment, you have to see it through, even if it means compromising on academics now and thenā, said Jindal, talking about CRCās absence during the apparel meet. āThe meet was about the apparel being brought on time and the payments. The CRC knew about it – they drafted the MOU. I needed to get the payment done quickly and I managed to get it done by the 16th of October by bypassing the CRC. If I hadnāt done it by then, the apparel would not have reached campus before Oasis startedā, he said.
Karunesh Talwarās payment was such a matter of urgency as well. āWe were supposed to get another artist to perform for N2O. However, his payment was not processed for a long time. The artist then cancelled the show just twenty days before the fest. Because of this, we had to get a different artist on board in a very short period of time. Therefore, Karunesh Talwar’s payment had to be processed quicklyā, Puli said. The representatives were quick to add that after these incidents, the CRC worked very efficiently during Oasis to get work done on time.
āWe accept that we did not follow the procedure as laid down in the Procedure Manual. However, whatever we did was only for practical reasons and there was no financial wrongdoing on our partā, said the office bearers.
A member of the StuCCA called the episode a āhuge overreaction to a minor incidentā. āCRC wasnāt present in the meeting and the President and General Secretary had to go through with the payment because it was urgent. We lost a good artist because payments were not done on time and Karunesh Talwar’s payments had to be processed in the last moment’, the StuCCAn said. āThe apparel Ā payment was discussed during the meet and the StuCCA was aware of what happened. However, the CRC was not present for the meetā, he added. āI canāt say that the CRC was wrong in sending the warning mail. The GBM needed to be intimatedā, he concluded.
The CRC, however, cited prior commitments by the other artist as the reason for the cancellation, quoting an email from the artistās representative dated 28th of September that stated that the artist āwonāt be able to perform for BITS on 4th of November due to the travel time itāll consume to reach and get back, since we have commitments on 3rd and 5th November.ā
The standard procedure for processing payments is drawn out by the CRC. āAn invoice is generated in the name of the Studentās Union and is mailed to the CRC. The CRC then writes a letter to the Dean, SWD, giving details of the account and amount to be paid and the President or General Secretary signs on it. The letter is then submitted to the SWD. It is signed by the Dean and is forwarded to the Accounts divisionā, said a member of the CRC. The procedure is time consuming as it has to pass through multiple Institutional channels, which cannot be rushed by the CRC. āThe CRC was not informed by the President or the General Secretary about the payments that were made bypassing us. The SWD employees suspected financial wrongdoing, and brought the matter to our attention. This is not a trivial issue,ā the CRC member added. āThe CRC exists to ensure that unchecked transactions do not occur, and this incident superseded all the checks and balances.ā Ā