SHC suspends Isra University registrar

Orders finance director to take charge, issue notification for chancellor

HYDRABAD:

The Sindh High Court (SHC), Hyderabad Circuit Bench, suspended Isra University Registrar Ghulam Qadir Memon and ordered Director Finance Ghulam Rasool Kazi to take the charge as acting registrar and issue notification for nomination of Prof Dr Ghulam Qadir Kazi as the Chancellor.

The development came as one of the two groups of academicians who remained in a dispute for the last two years over administrative control of the institution.

The SHC has given two days to the acting registrar to implement the order and submit the report in the court.

Meanwhile, after assuming the charge of the acting registrar on Tuesday, Ghulam Rasool notified the nomination of Prof Dr Ghulam Qadir as the Chancellor. Two separate notifications were issued in this regard.

"In compliance with the SHC's judgment dated December 9, 2022, the Board of Directors of Isra Islamic Foundation (IIF) has nominated Prof Dr Ghulam Qadir Kazi as the Chancellor," reads the notification. The Chancellor, nominated under section 7(1) of Isra University Act, will serve for a period of three years.

The SHC in its 25-page judgment on December 9 put the dispute between two groups of academicians, led by Prof Dr Nazir Leghari and the Kazi family, to rest by directing the IIF to nominate a new chancellor. The chancellor was later supposed to appoint either a new vice chancellor or to allow the disputed VCs Prof Dr Nazir Laghari or Dr Waliullah Kazi to continue.

The IIF, whose strength of 19 board of directors was reduced by the SHC to seven, existed in 2011, called a meeting of its directors on December 12. But only five of them attended as Dr Leghari and Prof Dr Ameer Bux Channa abstained.

Those five members nominated Prof Dr Ghulam Qadir, who is also among the foundation's directors, as the chancellor. But as his nomination was not accepted by the Leghari-led group of academicians, the SHC on December 13 again ordered all the seven council members to hold a meeting on December 15.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 22^nd, 2022.