Nearly 4,500 teachers in the 13 universities who have not received their salaries since June have threatened to stage a protest.

Over 10,000 non-teaching employees have also not received their salaries for June and July. On Wednesday. the teachers demanded that their salaries be released soon.

The Federation of University Teachers' Associations of Bihar has taken exception to the delay, stating the government was linking utilisation certificates with the salaries.

Working president of Federation of University Teachers' Associations of Bihar, Kanhaiya Bahadur Sinha, said: "In the name of seeking utilisation certificates from the universities, the government delays salaries of university teachers every time."

Sinha, who recently retired from Veer Kuer Singh University in Ara, said the government's move to link the utilisation certificates - use of sanctioned funds on development of college infrastructure or facilities - with teacher salaries is not good. "The education department has prior information about the number of teachers working in the different universities as the salaries are deposited in the accounts of the teachers," he said.

He also stated that if the education department was so serious about the utilisation certificates, it should be linked with the government's funds for development and University Grants Commission funds for respective universities.

K. Senthil Kumar, additional secretary, education, said: "We have released salaries for university teachers a few months ago. I cannot remember exactly when as I am in a department meeting, but the funds will be disbursed soon."

"Teachers are facing a hard time because of non-payment of salary," said MLC Sanjay Kumar Singh, the association's general secretary. "The government's only focus is prohibition but the state's growth rate has gone down and the government has no money to pay its employees."

He claimed that if this continued, the non-teaching employees would have more problems as their salaries are lower than that of the teachers.

Mahavir Prasad, a non-teaching employee at Patna University, concurred. "Our salaries are very less as compared to the teaching employees. This delay is creating financial problems for us as we have to borrow money from markets or relatives for survival."

Contract faculty in government schools, who have also not received their salaries, gheraoed education minister Ashok Kumar Choudhary.