Ending uncertainty: Punjab gets power to appoint varsity heads

LHC accepts provincial government’s appeal against single bench verdict

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court has finally allowed the Punjab government to appoint vice-chancellors at public universities, laying to rest months of uncertainty about powers enjoyed by the acting varsity heads.

Accepting the Punjab government’s appeal against an earlier verdict, an LHC division bench headed by Chief Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah gave the government powers to appoint the vice-chancellors on Thursday.

The court ruled this while announcing the long-awaited judgment on an intra-court appeal against the verdict by a single bench, which had given powers to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) to appoint the VCs.

The federation, the LHC ruling stated, can set standards in institutions of higher education always over the minimum national criteria, as it caters to all public-sector universities in the country and maintains national unity and federal compact.

Simultaneously, the province is empowered to develop standards that can be higher and more stringent as compared to the federal standards, but not below the federal standard.

The division bench added the provincial legislature has the power to set standards, including procedures and criteria, for the selection of the VC as long as they are not below the minimum standards set by the federation.

The court directed the Council of Common Interests (CCI) to review all the standards in institutions of higher education framed by HEC in order to make them constitutionally compliant within the next six months.

The judges also directed the HEC and the federal government to work under the supervision and control of CCI and route any policies or regulations through the council. The policies will only be considered legally binding if approved by the CCI.

The court ordered the Punjab government to proceed with the appointment of the VCs of four public-sector universities – Lahore College for Women University, University of Sargodha, University of Punjab and Muhammad Nawaz Sharif University of Engineering & Technology – strictly on the basis of the recommendations of the VC search committee by considering a panel of three persons in the case of each university. All future appointments at the state-run universities in Punjab will be made according to the law settled with this latest judgment.

The tenure of the provisional VCs of the four named universities shall come to an end when regular VCs are appointed in compliance with this judgment, the court ruled, making it clear that order of the single bench was effective only to the four universities.

The Punjab government had filed the appeal against Justice Shahid Karim’s order passed on December 1 last year. The judge ordered the removal of acting VCs of the four mentioned universities and instructed the HEC to fill the posts according to law.

The court also declared the process of appointing VCs by the Punjab Higher Education Department illegal, directing the HEC to devise a criteria separately for every university and make separate search committees for all universities to fill the seats.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 28^th, 2017.