LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Wednesday dismissed a petition filed against the appointment of Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed as the vice chancellor of University of Sargodha (UOS).
Justice Shahid Kareem of LHC, who had reserved the judgment on May 18, dismissed the quo-warranto petition filed by Hasnain Raza Barvi to challenge the appointment of Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed as the UOS vice chancellor.
In his petition, Barvi had claimed that Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed did not meet the eligibility criteria and not have a 12-year teaching experience at a Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) recognised university. He had also argued that the defendant did not have 15 research publications in any of the HEC recognised research journals.
The petitioner had prayed to the court that orders of Dr Ishtiaq’s appointment may be suspended since the latter’s selection was “void and illegal”. Following this, LHC had sought replies from the Punjab Higher Education Commission (PHEC), HEC, Islamabad and Higher Education Department on the prescribed petition.
After receiving an endorsement from all the institutions concerned over the issue, Justice Kareem dismissed Barvi’s petition and declared the appointment legal and on merit.
Earlier on May 7, the same court had dismissed another petition filed by Muhammad Shafiq Mirza against certain appointments made by UOS including the appointment of Additional Registrar Choudhry Izharul Haq, Controller Examinations Dr Bashir Ahmed, Web Development Cell Incharge Tahir Umar, Program Manager Javed Jaidi, Student Affairs Director Ejaz Asghar Bhatti, Academics Assistant Director Maryam Gul, Additional Treasurer Muhammad Maqsood and Assistant Registrar Muhammad Farooq.
While the petitioner had prayed the court to denotify the said appointments as they “had been made without advertising the vacancies”, Justice Kareem, in the light of replies submitted by HED and HEC, had dismissed the petition and declared the appointments legal.
