Dehradun: Income Tax (I-T) officials who carried out a survey of a state-funded university have claimed to have found Rs 23 crore unaccounted money in the university’s finances. A senior I-T official, who was part of the survey team, said that a penalty of Rs 3 crore has also been imposed on the varsity for tax evasion.“We unearthed a surplus of Rs 23 crore from the bank account of the university. The university had also not filed any income tax returns (ITR) on the unaccounted money,” a senior I-T official told TOI on Wednesday.The I-T official added that scores of other educational institutions, including state funded colleges in Uttarakhand are also under scanner.“We are suspecting that many of these institutes have not filed ITRs,” the official added.The university in question has more than 1 lakh students enrolled in graduation and post-graduation courses. It gets funds from the state education department to meet its salary and infrastructural expansion needs.An official from the university when contacted by TOI, said that “the money, which the I-T team had declared unaccounted, was in fact the savings amount kept to meet our infrastructure needs.”“The money that the I-T officials are claiming is unaccounted is actually the funds which we had kept for our infrastructure expansion plan. We did not spend the money and had kept it in the bank account,” the official who is a senior member of the faculty, said.He added that the I-T officials were informed that the university’s finance department had ‘made an error’ by not filing the ITR.The IT official however dismissed the claims made by the varsity officials and said the university will have to pay the penalty for violating income tax rules.

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