Shimla: The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has rapped the India's oldest all-women college, St. Bede's in this Himachal Pradesh capital, for charging tuition fee from the students belonging to the state.

The tuition fee was charged from 1996 to 2010 by the college authorities despite state government instructions to exempt Himachal girls from the fee.

"Scrutiny of records revealed that the college, financed by the state by way of grant-in-aid to the extent of 95 percent, had charged tuition fee amounting to Rs.65.92 lakh from 9,768 students during 1996-97 to 2009-10 in contravention of the state government's instructions," the CAG said in its report tabled in the state assembly last week.

However, when the CAG pointed out lapses of the college in following the government order, the college stopped charging fee from July last year, the authorities said.

The college principal in reply to the CAG report in February 2009 said the copy of instructions was not endorsed by the education department. As the tuition fee is considered as part of income for calculating grant-in-aid, the benefits had gone to the government, not to the college.

The CAG put the blame on the education department for its failure to monitor the government order and for depriving the girl students of the fee waiver.

St. Bede's has been running college since 1904 and boasts of alumni like actress Preity Zinta, late model and beauty queen Persis Khambatta and Himachal Pradesh's first woman police officer Satwant Atwal. IANS