Small victory for Hindu student as court rules he can sit medical school test

If haven’t taken Islami­yat and Bible studie­s at O’ Levels, you won’t have the papers to apply.

KARACHI: If you are a Sikh, Parsi or say Hindu student who sat the O’ and A’ Level exams but now wanted to apply to medical school, you would be turned away because you wouldn’t have fulfilled the criteria. But all of this could change now as a court gave a Hindu student provisional permission on Friday to appear in the October 30 entrance test for medical college.

What Sagar Ladhani came up against, like many other students, was a hitch in the system that doesn’t factor in religious minorities other than Christians. In order to apply to medical school O’ and A’ Level students need an equivalence certificate from the Inter Board Committee of Chairmen (IBCC). But you can only get that certificate if you have either taken Islamiyat or Bible studies. For students like Sagar, there is no other subject.

“This condition is against my fundamental rights entrenched in the constitution,” the Beacon House Schooling System student had argued in his petition before the court. When he went to the IBCC for his certificate, he was told he would only get one if he had passed a religious studies subject at the O’ level or taken the Ethics course at the matriculation level with the local board. One option was to wait till the Ethics exam in May 2012. “[But then] I would waste one precious year of my career,” he said. “In this way there would be unfair competition since other O’ Level students would have passed eight subjects and I would have to pass nine subjects.”

When the IBCC refused to give him a certificate, a panicked Ladhani filed an instant petition in the Sindh High Court through Barrister Mohammad Farogh Naseem, who is known as a constitutional expert. On Friday, the court said he could sit the exam.

“This decision came as an interim relief,” said Sagar’s father Misri Ladhani while talking to The Express Tribune. “I believe that justice will be done in my son’s case as I’m very optimistic about our judicial system.”

The jubilant father said that certified copies of the court’s order would be provided to both the university and the National Testing System on Saturday morning so that they would act in line with it.

He said that the main person named in the case, the IBCC, didn’t appear in court on Friday, so the bench, comprising Chief Justice Mushir Alam and Justice Ahmed Ali Sheikh, fixed November 15 for the next hearing.

Barrister Naseem maintained that the IBCC’s reply would be important to analyse whether students belonging to religious minorities would continue to suffer or not. “The committee should call off the requirement of eight subjects in the O’ Level if students of the religious minorities need to appear in an additional course of Ethics under the local board,” he said. “To acquire an equivalence certificate, Muslim students take seven subjects and opt for Islamiyat as the eighth course in the O’ Level while Christian students take Religious Studies for Bible Knowledge as the eighth one. I don’t know what viable option is left for the students of other religious minorities?”

Barrister Naseem contended that the committee should reconcile this issue with the British system of education as the problem lies more on their side.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 29^th, 2011.