Delayed: SHC adjourns petitions against Peoples medical university

The petitioners said that they did not know PUMHS would combine results with CMUHS.

KARACHI:

The hearing of about a dozen identical constitutional petitions by a large number of candidates who applied for admission in Peoples University of Medical and Health Sciences (PUMHS) was adjourned for Wednesday due to shortage of time by a division bench of the High Court of Sindh (SHC), comprising Justice Munib Akhtar and Justice Salman Hamid, on Tuesday.

The petitioners said that PUMHS issued a joint corrigendum on October 10 of the last year with Chandka University of Medical and Health Sciences (CMUHS) giving a combined list of successful candidates. They maintained that when they had applied for admission they were not told about the joint result, both at the time of submitting the initial fee and when giving the entrance test. They said that PUMHS had also released a provisional list but later changed its admission policy. The issuance of a joint corrigendum by two respondent universities is beyond their authority and jurisdiction, and an amendment in their prospectus after starting the admission process is also illegal, the applicants said.

The court was asked to declare that the act of combining the list of successful candidates is illegal and to declare the petitioners’ entitlement for admission in the first year of MBBS according to the provisional list. The petitions are being fixed daily on the request of petitioners but due to the shortage of time and limited number of benches available during winter vacations, these appeals are being deferred repeatedly.

The petitions of Tuesday were adjourned until 11.30 am on Wednesday.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 4^th, 2012.