BZU video: ‘You should’ve accepted my VC choice’

Khosa says permanent VC could have averted incident.

LAHORE:

Governor Sardar Latif Khan Khosa has urged Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to finalise the appointment of a vice chancellor to Bahauddin Zakariya University (BZU) in Multan and extend the admissions deadline for candidates applying for admission to undergraduate programmes at public universities.

The governor and the chief minister have long been at odds over the post and both have faced criticism for the delay in making a permanent appointment, particularly after the recent emergence of a video showing two BZU students being raped and beaten by fellow students.

In a letter to the chief minister, available with The Express Tribune, the governor reiterated his backing for Dr Muhammad Zafarullah as vice chancellor and said that the absence of a permanent appointment was “hampering the administrative and academic activities of the university” and may lead “to further embarrassment”.

About the video, he wrote: “The effect of these heinous acts of outlaws was so traumatic that the father of one of the victims reportedly died of grief due to the disgraceful torture inflicted on his son, just because university management had been rendered incapacitated to cope with such a situation in the absence of a VC.

These dehumanising episodes were avoidable and could have been averted, had the appointment of VC, BZU Multan, been notified by the Government of the Punjab”.

The chief minister Shahbaz Sharif wants to appoint Dr Khawaja Alqama as vice chancellor. The Punjab government spokesman was unavailable for comment.

In a separate letter to the chief minister, Khosa sought a 15-day postponement in the deadline for admission applications for undergraduate degrees, as the intermediate exam results of some 30,000 students had been delayed.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 22^nd, 2011.