PU to act against five plagiarising physicists

Punjab University (PU) administration is initiating action against the five Center for High Energy Physics (CHEP) professors accused of plagiarism with PU VC Professor Dr Mujahid Kamran expected to send Show Cause Notices (SCN) to them soon, Pakistan Today learnt on Sunday.
Syndicate meeting: PU sources revealed a meeting of the PU syndicate decided SCN shall be sent to the accused professors following the Supreme Court’s decisions on the matter and action shall be taken in accordance with The Punjab Employees Efficiency, Discipline and Accountability (PEEDA) act.
Sources said the administration was also going to take action on plagiarism accusations against a PU dean and four other PU professors, with their status on the next syndicate meetings agenda. The PU administration is expected to issue SCN to the five alleged plagiarists including former CHEP director Dr Fazle Aleem, Rashid Ahmad, Sohail Afzal Tahir, M Aslam Saeed and Maqsood Ahmad this week. PU sources said the PU syndicate issued a unanimous motion and authorized the PU VC Professor Dr Mujahid Kamran to sent SCN to CHEP Plagiarists, complying with the PEEDA act.
A PU syndicate member said they were hopeful of removing the five plagiarism accused according the PEEDA act.
History: In 2007, former Governor Lt Gen (retd.) Khalid Maqbool forcibly removed the five accused from services but a three-member bench of the Supreme Court on restored two assistant professors (APs) includes Maqsood Ahmed and Alam Saeed in December last year. The SC bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Jawad S Khwaja and Justice Khalilur Rahman Ramday, held that the former Punjab governor was not the competent authority to remove them.
The court held that the university had not adopted the correct legal course against them and therefore they were being restored. However, the bench also held that university authorities were at liberty to hold departmental proceedings against them. At the SC, the appellants, Maqsood Ahmed and Alam Saeed, had submitted that the university authorities did not adopt legal course in removing them. Their counsel had submitted that the vice chancellor had sought assistance from a syndicate committee, which recommended the seizure of two increments each. They further said that the syndicate did not find them involved in plagiarism. The appellants said that the chancellor had gone beyond the limits of his authority and that instead of seizing their increments, as recommended by the syndicate, removed them from service.
Based upon the SC’s decision: Now on the basis of the SCs decision, the PU syndicate put the plagiarm accused back on its agenda. Another Syndicate member promised plagiarism will be a key part of upcoming syndicate meetings and five other plagiarism cases including a Professor and Assistant professor of Geography department, a female Assistant Professor of Institute of Communication Studies (ICS) had been identified and shall be dealt with. He said that the accused professors had copied the data of foreign professors and even their onw colleagues and published research papers on plagarised data. He said the HEC had a zero tolerance policy on the matter. He said that the HEC had expressed concern about plagiarism at PU and expected PU VC Professor Dr Mujahid Kamran to take action.
PU has suffered from plagiarism from man years and foreign varsities were planning to black list PU in 2007 over the CHEP plagiarism accusations. Four international conferences, scheduled to be held at the PU, had been postponed the same year and the HEC had stopped a Rs 110 million grant to PU over the matter.