Justice denied

Punjab Public Services Commission (PPSC) has allegedly failed a female student, Rabia Saeed, who topped last year’s written examination for the lecturers’ seats and is a gold medallist. According to sources, Rabia secured around 90 percent marks but was not considered for the 70 seats available for female physics professors in the last year’s PPSC exams. On the other hand a large number of brilliant students who appeared in the exams demanded from the chief justice of Pakistan to take notice of the issue as the authorities were allegedly involved in favouritism and they had ignored brilliant students to appoint candidates of their choice.
The education community, especially students, expressed their concern over the performance of the PPSC especially in connection with the lecturers’ seats for scale 17 in the last year’s exams in various subjects, adding that this was the ‘worst’ corruption they had ever seen. Stakeholders inside the PPSC also expressed their shock and said some ‘hidden hand’ was involved in replacing the name of Rabia with another candidate and it was unfair since Rabia had secured the first position. According to sources in the PPSC, the PPSC had conducted written exams for around 70 posts of lectures last year on August 14 while according to results, Rabia Saeed, Roll no. 40482 was in the top 355 students who had cleared the written examination. PPSC sources said last year on November 21, a panel had conducted ‘controversial’ interviews after some elements tried to approach the members of the penal to gain favours from them.
The source said some influential people were very interested in those 70 contract-based seats for five years in the Punjab Higher Education Department, adding that even though only the deserving candidates had been called for interview, there were rumours that the criterion of transparency in the selection process was not met and Rabia Saeed was the proof of it.
“It is bad luck for our country that brilliant students such as Rabia are being ignored,” said a physics professor, adding that an action needed to be taken against the culprits and Rabia be given the seat that she deserved.
A senior official of PPSC asking not to be named said the PPSC’s exam system was transparent and Rabia’s gold medal ‘did not count’ since everyone was a gold medallist these days, adding that it was not essential that a topper would be successful in an interview also.