Peshawar   -   Appointment of vice-chancellors in the universities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are a topic of discussions, while academic circles have expressed their apprehensions and cried foul over the process undertaken by the outgoing interim government.

It merits a mention here that Dr Attaur Rehman, former chairman of the search committee of VCs’ appointment, had resigned a year ago, after committee members led by him awarded marks to each candidate of VC-ship.

However, the previous interim government formed another committee, which selected top three candidates based on the list already finalised by Dr Attaur Rehman-led search committee. Several senior academicians have alleged that the selections of the top three candidates were not done on the basis of merit.

There are several candidates who are having good marks but the latest committee had ignored them while giving more priority to those having less marks as per the evaluation of Dr Attaur Rehman-led search committee.

For example, for Khushal Khan Khattak University Karak, Prof Dr Saeed Islam had been awarded 71 marks while Prof Dr Tahir Khalily was having 63.20 as per the evaluation of the search committee. However, Dr Saeed Islam has been placed at number 2 and Dr Tahir Tahir Khalily on 1st position.

Similarly, as per the list seen by The Nation, Prof Dr Zafar Iqbal had been awarded 56.40 marks for Khushal Khan Khattak University while Dr Mohsin Nawaz was having 63 marks as per the search committee evaluation.

However, the recent committee of the ex-interim government reportedly placed Dr Mohsin on 2nd position and Dr Zafar Iqbal on the first place.

There are many candidates who face the same situation, which has panicked them and they demand that the incumbent government review the lists and select candidates for VC-ship on merit.

Dr Attaul Rehman, former chairman of the HEC and chief of the previous search committee, told The Nation that each of their search committee members would award marks to each VC-ship candidate and later an aggregate would be decided for each of them.

“First we would file a list of candidates on the basis of their experiences, research publications, etc. And later, interviews would be conducted, for which separate marks would be allotted. All this was meant to ensure merit and transparency,” he added.

“However, since I resigned the former committee, I don’t know about the process followed by the later committee for the appointments,” he added.

When contacted, Minister for Higher Education Meena Khan Afridi told The Nation that the incumbent government has also received same complaints regarding manipulation of merit list.

“These complaints are the reason behind delay in appointments of vice-chancellors in the universities of KP so far,” he added.

Meena Khan further said that he would table the issue before the KP cabinet, which would decide whether to continue the same appointment process or resume a new process of the selection of VCs.

“We will also re-check the merit list and marks awarded to candidates and other issues,” he added.