LAHORE
UMAIR AZIZ
The children of influential people will have to now work hard, study and compete with all and sundry to secure admissions in not just city’s prime seats of learning at Aitchison College, but in other public sector universities as well as the Punjab government on Wednesday decided to abolish quota system in 12 public universities of the province.
Progeny of the province’s elite failed to get admission at Aitchison this year because of this move. The notables include close relatives of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, grandchildren of late governor Salman Taseer, grandson of Chief Secretary Naveed Cheema, grandson of a former chief secretary and several others.
The government’s move to abolish quota system is said to have left the university vice chancellors with more power and curb the powers of the Higher Education Department (HED). Reportedly, the government is also deciding to ban quota in colleges as well.
HED Secretary Abdullah Sumbal was not available for comments, while Education Minister Rana Mashhood refused to comment on the issue.
However, commenting on the past irregularities at Aitchison, a senior government official, on the condition of anonymity, told Pakistan Today that parents trained their children for two years to secure admission in Aitchison College but failed to get in while children of influential parents, despite being “failures”, manage to occupy seats in the college.
The official further said that this quota system was also being misused to a large extent because of wide-ranging discretionary powers available to the officials. “There have been allegations of bribes under garb of donations and various other backdoors created for securing admission for failed students,” he added.
In previous years, incidents were reported in the media where failed students were given admissions because of their elite backgrounds while in a scandal, the Governor House sent a list of such students to the college during the previous regime.
However, Aitchison College Board of Governors (BoG) has decided to abolish all kinds of backdoors for securing admissions.
Former Aitchisonian and member of the Board of Governors, Dr Umar Saif said that Aitchison was a place where the elite could get in while there was no place for the middle class.
“It is a good thing that your grandfather or brother was an old student and you could be given a few marks, but this policy is then misused by those given discretionary powers. Governor Chaudhry Sarwar proposed that the merit should be ensured,” he said.
“Aitchison College’s admissions are now a level-playing field for everyone and your elite background would not get you a place if you don’t fall on merit. Also the name of the child with his father’s name and marks is also displayed on a board in the college,” Saif added.