KARACHI, Feb 23: A meeting chaired by the Sindh home minister, Rauf Siddiqui, and attended by college principals and senior police officials on Wednesday decided to prevent any outsiders or persons in possession of licensed or unlicensed weapons on the premises of colleges throughout the province with immediate effect.

Besides, a five to seven-member discipline committee, headed by college principals, will also be set up at every college for law and order purposes and for maintaining a meaningful academic environment there.

The meeting was convened by the Home department to find out a solution to the frequent events of hostilities and acts of hooliganism in educational institutions, particularly in Karachi's colleges.

After the meeting, the home minister told Dawn that college administrations, with the support of law enforcing agencies, would keep a check on the entry of external elements and take action against them irrespective of their political affiliations. Unauthorized persons can also be handed over to the police, he added.

In principle, he continued, that it had been decided that students and staff would have to prove their identity and wear their respective college uniforms while entering colleges. Students, at least, would have to show their college identity cards and display college badges.

Mr Siddiqui said that college principals would be extended all-out support in maintaining college affairs and ensuring protection of staff and students at their colleges.

He said the TPO or DPO, a couple of college staff, and senior and serious students would be included in the discipline committee, which, if needed, might consider any request from students with regard to holding academic or extracurricular programmes and take decision on merit, without any partiality or bias.

He mentioned that persons, including bona fide students and teachers, entering the college would be required not to possess any kind of weapons. Otherwise, they would be liable to strict action, including being arrested. To a question, he said that outsiders or groups of students desiring to meet college principals would have to seek prior appointment.

A good number of principals and in-charge principals from male and female colleges attended the meeting. The acting IG Police Sindh, Asad Jehangir, and CCPO Tariq Jamil and EDO (Higher Education) Prof Rais Alvi and DOE (Colleges) Prof Mohammad Asghar Khan and a number of TPOs also attended.

It was further learnt that the principals agreed to have a certain code of conduct to discourage unlawful and political activities on campuses. It is likely that EDOs (Education) would be asked to submit the code of conduct for colleges to the home department for a uniform implementation in the province's colleges, said a source.

A town police official suggested that principals should report to the police for custody of an outsider as soon as they came to know about his unauthorized movement in the college.

Principals expressed concern over the deteriorating law and order situation and stressed upon the need for providing protection to them in ensuring the academic discipline intact.

The meeting was told that the government should take some concrete and bold measures to keep political parties and their motivated activists out of campuses, otherwise maintenance of a durable peace or meaningful atmosphere in educational institutions would always remain a difficult job for teachers and the government alike.

However, principals were told that the government would take all-out measures to keep external and unruly elements away from academic institutions, and that sanctity of institutions would be upheld at all cost.

The minister asked the principals to maintain a balance in their attitude and use their authorities judiciously while running college affairs, said a source privy to the meeting.

The minister told the principals that deployment of Rangers at colleges was impossible; however, police would be made available as and when the situation arose, or when principals demanded so for security.

The purpose of including TPOs in the newly ordered college committee was that area police would immediately rush to any college where any law and order situation was feared, a teacher said, quoting the minister.

In the meantime, while lauding proceedings of the meeting, some principals confided to Dawn that since colleges were controlled by the Sindh education department and the EDO offices, there was a need that the decisions taken on Wednesday be routed through the Sindh education department and the EDO offices for implementation.