LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) double bench on Monday rejected an intra-court appeal against the judgment of the appointment of VCs of four public sector universities in Punjab, including Punjab University VC Dr Mujahid Kamran were removed.
The double bench was comprised by Chief Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Justice Faisal Zaman Khan. Hearing of the intra court appeal was against the judgment of honorable Justice Shahid Karim on December 1, 2016.
In this judgment, Justice Shahid ordered that Dr Mujahid Karman of the Punjab University, Dr Sara Shahid of the Lahore College for Women University, Dr Nazir Sultana of the Sargodha University and Dr Fazal Ahmed of Nawaz Sharif Engineering University, Multan, should be removed from the posts within seven days and charge should be given to the senior most professors of the respective universities.
He had also ordered the federal Higher Education Commission (HEC) to prepare minimum eligibility for the post of the vice chancellors at public sector varsities, notify separate search committees for all four universities, and start afresh the process of VCs appointment within 30 days of the judgment.
He had further directed the Punjab Higher Education Department (HED) to appoint the senior most professors at each of the four universities as interim VCs. The court heard arguments from Additional Advocate General Shan Gul, Advocate Saad Rasool who represented the petitioners in the original petition, and Aftab Bajwa.
After the adjournment of the case, Saad Rasool briefed the journalists about today’s proceedings. “He said that the court ordered the dispatch of notices to respondents,” he said. He added that the court suspended the order that had directed the HEC to start the appointment process afresh within 30 days.
“The court changed the status of the vice chancellors at seven public universities, including UET Lahore, BZU Multan, University of Gujarat, and Education University to the interim vice chancellors”, Saad Rasool said. Chief Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah said that the court would appoint a neutral person as interim VC each at PU, LCWU, NSUET, and UoS.
He further ordered that none of the existing interim VCs at these universities could continue as interim VC. He said that the new interim VCs would be chosen from among the three candidates shortlisted by the search committee for each university.
The decision brought an end to Dr Mujahid Kamran’s almost 9-year mostly controversial and turbulent tenure. He treated the PU as his personal empire during these years and victimized teachers, students, and staff at will. Uplift of academic quality remained among his lowest priorities. Although, the number of PhD faculty and students had increased during his tenure, all quality indicators continued to decline, particularly, during his second 4-year tenure and the almost one year charge as look-after vice chancellor.
The number of impact factor and HEC journal papers per PhD faculty, number of PhDs awarded per PhD faculty, and student-to-teacher ratio have been on a continuous downward slide. PU ranked second in HEC rankings in 2008 when he took over as VC, and it still ranks second after having gone down to 5th position. In the back-to-back research based rankings by the Punjab IT University (ITU), it has been ranked 5th. It ranks nowhere in any of the recognised rankings of world universities, including QS and the Times ranking.
Victimization of faculty and staff through fake inquiries, orchestrating in-fighting among teachers, staff, and students, hundreds of illegal appointments, and partition of the university into two pieces through donation of over 700 kanals of the PU land at New Campus and several kanals at Old Campus to government of the Punjab for the road projects without any benefits for the university would be remembered as hallmarks of his tenure, as would be the continuous dominance of the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba (IJT) and other controversial student groups at the university.
The faculty, students, and staff have greatly admired the LHC decision of removing Dr Kamran and appointing a neutral person as interim VC. The celebrations in this regard continue at the filing of this report.
