PESHAWAR: Reserved medical seats’ abolition termed legal: Engineers’ children
Bureau Report
PESHAWAR, Oct 18: Dismissing a writ petition, a division bench of the Peshawar High Court on Thursday declared the abolition of engineers’ children’s reserved seats in medical colleges by the provincial government as legal.
The bench, comprising Justice Nasirul Mulk and Justice Shehzad Akber Khan, ruled that the decision of the provincial government was in line with a judgment of the Supreme Court through which the apex court had declared all the reserved seats as illegal and unconstitutional.
The petition was filed by Ms Hadia Shah, whose father is associate professor in NWFP University of Engineering and Technology. She was earlier granted interim relief by the high court about five months back and given provisional admission in Khyber Medical College.
Her counsel, Abdul Qadir Khattak, argued that there were reserved seats in medical colleges for Engineering University teachers’ children and on reciprocal basis seats were reserved for doctors’ children in the Engineering University. However, he argued the reserved seats in the medical college was abolished whereas the seats for doctors’ children in engineering university were still in place.
Mr Khattak referred to an earlier judgment of the Peshawar High Court through which it had declared abolition seats for doctors’ children in medical colleges by the provincial government as illegal and discriminatory.
He said that when the doctors’ children’s seats could be restored then why not those of engineers’ children’s. About the Supreme Court’s judgment, he argued that the court had declared all the quotas as illegal except that of disabled persons, tribal students and foreign seats on reciprocal basis.
However, he stated that the Supreme Court granted relief to those students who were given provisional admission and had spent three or four years in the medical college. Mr Khattak added that in the present case the students had already been given provisional admission, therefore it would not run counter to the judgment of the apex court.
Advocate Waseemuddin Khattak, appearing for Khyber Medical College, contended that the Supreme Court’s verdict was clear on the point. He stated that the provincial government had abolished all the reserved seats in line with the court’s judgment.
The bench observed that the present petition could not be related to the previous judgment of the high court as that concerned cases of doctors’ children’s seats and those seats were a sort of incentives for the doctors so that instead of joining private practice they preferred teaching in medical colleges. The bench added that reserved seats for engineers’ children in medical colleges were different from those reserved for doctors’ children.
EPB seminar: The Export Promotion Bureau will hold a seminar on the export finance scheme for the NWFP business community on Saturday.
The seminar will inform the exporters and industrialists of the facilities and institutions created by the government to meet their finance requirements.
Some 40 representatives of pharmaceuticals, engineering, leather, furniture companies and banks have applied for attending the seminar. This is the fourth in the series of seminars on the subject. The first three were held in Karachi, Lahore and Sialkot.
