Retirement age: Appeals against VC’s removal adjourned

Advocate general absent from hearing for second day.

LAHORE:

A four-member Supreme Court bench on Monday adjourned for a day appeals filed by the Punjab government and Prof Malik Hussain Mubashar against the latter’s removal as vice chancellor of the University of Health Sciences.

The bench adjourned the hearing as Advocate General Ashtar Ausaf Ali was again absent from proceedings. At the last hearing, the court was told he could not appear as he had been injured in an accident. On Monday, the court was told that the advocate general had not shown up because he was appearing before the chief justice of Pakistan in Islamabad.

However, the court heard arguments on an appeal filed by Prof Mubashar on Monday. His lawyer said that Prof Mubashar had been appointed vice chancellor on April 17, 2003, for a four-year term. He retired as professor on February 9, 2005, but continued as VC. On February 19, 2007, the Punjab governor, acting on the UHS board of governors’ recommendations, ordered him to continue as VC till the process for appointment of a permanent VC is initiated. At this, Justice Saqib Nisar asked the counsel why the process had not been initiated by 2011. The counsel replied that the matter had remained in limbo.

About the legal requirements for the appointment of the VC, the counsel said that Section 12 of the UHS Ordinance merely stated that a candidate must be a professor. The retirement age for a professor is 60 years, he said in response to a query by the court. Prof Mubashar was over the age of 60 when he applied for the post after March 2011.

Prof Mubashar was again appointed vice chancellor of the UHS for four years in January. The Lahore High Court later ruled the appointment illegal. The SC has allowed him to stay on until the Punjab government’s appeal against the order is decided.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 13^th, 2012.