Court orders: Govt restrained from taking action against AWKUM VC

Syed Afsar was informed the petitioner was an educationist who was awarded for his services

PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench stopped the provincial government from taking action against the vice chancellor Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan and sought a reply from Higher Education Commission.

The bench headed by Justice Syed Afsar Shah heard a petition on Tuesday filed by AWKUM Vice Chancellor Professor Ihsan Ali through his counsel Syed Arshad Ali. Syed Afsar was informed the petitioner was an educationist who was awarded for his service in the field of education on national and international levels.

The petitioner’s counsel told the bench Ihsan was appointed as the vice chancellor of the varsity by the previous government. He was given an extension till 2017 on his position owing to his performance, the counsel said.

However, the provincial government was finding excuses to remove him from his position, the counsel added. “The government has also been introducing amendments in various related acts so that Ihsan can be removed from the post of vice chancellor.”

Through the university act, the government reduced the tenure of a vice chancellor to three years, while it also passed an amendment that empowered the government to remove the vice chancellor. He said some legal technicalities came in the government’s way due to which Ihsan was [still] on the post.

“The amendments that were introduced seemed to be passed just to remove the applicant as the provincial government has sent a summary to the governor for sending him on a forced leave [notice],” he maintained. “[However] both the summaries were dismissed by the governor as there was no law that gives the governor an excuse to send a VC on forced leave.”

But, he added, recently the government has introduced another amendment whereby the government can send any VC on a three-month forced leave without mentioning any reason.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 17^th, 2016.