The Sindh High Court (SHC) has directed the federal and provincial authorities to file their comments by November 19 on a petition challenging formation of the Sindh Higher Education Commission.
The bench, headed by Chief Justice Maqbool Baqar, passed the direction on an application seeking an early hearing of the petition challenging the legality of the Sindh Higher Education Commission Act 2013.
The petition was jointly filed by the Higher Education Commission’s (HEC) former chairperson Dr Attaur Rehman and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s Marvi Memon, who urged the court to put a stay on the establishment of the proposed commission at the provincial level.
The controversy
On February 21, 2013, the Sindh Assembly passed the Sindh Higher Education Commission Act 2013 to set up its own provincial body that would be autonomous and had the authority to verify degrees awarded by any institution in the world.
The litigation
In their petition, the HEC former chief and Memon argued that higher education was the exclusive domain of the federal legislature. They claimed that the Sindh government was trying to destroy the federal status of the HEC by promulgating the act.
“The main functions of the HEC are being assigned to Sindh’s HEC,” said the petitioners. “This means that there will be no cohesion in higher education and the work will be done independently by separate agencies.”
They claimed that the provincial government had no authority to act contrary to the rights stated in the Constitution and was destroying the fundamental rights of citizens by eliminating the role of the HEC to suit its purposes. No law, which is contained in the Federal Consolidated List, can be enacted or promulgated by a province. Rehman and Memon said that the new law was a move to avoid the verification process of lawmakers’ degrees which the federal Higher Education Commission had initiated on the orders of the Election Commission of Pakistan. The court was pleaded to declare the Sindh Higher Education Commission Act 2013 as unlawful and unconstitutional.
Taking up the matter first on March 1, 2013, the two-judge bench had issued notices to the federal and provincial government authorities to file their comments by March 5.
Urgent hearing
At a recent hearing, the petitioners’ lawyer moved an application requesting to the court to fix an early date to hear the matter. Allowing the request, the bench issued notices to the federal and provincial authorities to file their comments by November 19.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 6th, 2014.
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