LAHORE - A Lahore High Court division bench yesterday called back its order regarding appointment of vice-chancellors in seven varsities and directed Higher Education Commission to submit a detailed reply on Jan 16.
During the hearing, Advocate General Punjab Shakilur Rehman Khan submitted before the court that the matter of seven universities was mistakenly made part of the proceedings in hand. At this, the bench headed by Chief Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah withdrew order to the extent of vice-chancellors of seven universities.
The bench had earlier observed that the VCs already appointed at the seven universities on Aug 27, 2015 would act provisionally and their fate would be subject to final decision of the government’s intra court appeal against the single bench verdict.
The court, on Dec 19, 2016, suspended a single bench judgement that set aside appointment process initiated by the Punjab government for VCs at four varsities including Punjab University, Lahore College for Women University, University of Sargodha and Nawaz Sharif University Engineering & Technology, Multan. The court had appointed new acting VCs at the four universities making selection from the list of senior most professors provided by the government.
The seven varsities whose cases was separated by the bench were Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi; Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan, Ghazi University, Dera Ghazi Khan; Government Sadiq Degree College for Women University, Bahawalpur; Khawaja Fareed University of Engineering & Information Technology, Rahim Yar Khan; Government College University, Lahore; and University of Education, Lahore.