LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Wednesday set aside the quota-based admission policy for MBBS, describing it as a violation of the fundamental rights protected by the Constitution.

Several candidates of MBBS had filed the petitions challenging the admission policy. Representing the petitioners, a counsel argued that they had secured sufficient marks in FSc to get admission but had been denied it.

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The counsel said the candidates were intentionally deprived of admission as the University of Health Sciences (UHS) secretly enforced the quota-based admission policy under which 50pc of the seats were allocated to male and the remaining to the female students.

He said the UHS had announced that the admission to MBBS would be done on the basis of open merit. However, female students applied but only five days before the deadline for submission of the admission forms, the policy was secretly changed, the counsel added.

He further said the university changed the policy only to discourage female students from getting admission to MBBS. He pointed out that the female students usually secured 62 per cent in open merit policy.

The counsel cited judgments of Supreme Court and asked the court to strike down the impugned admission policy for being a violation of the fundamental rights. The court admitted the arguments and set aside the quota-based admission policy.

Plea admitted: The Lahore High Court on Wednesday overruled a registrar’s office objection and admitted a petition for hearing that sought a ban on the PML-N, PPP and JUI-F for not holding intra-party polls.

Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah took up the petition as an objection case.

Advocate Gohar Nawaz Sindhu, affiliated with the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, filed the petition and submitted that the political parties did not hold intra-party elections.

He said the parties violated the political order and it was against the spirit of democratic system as well. He asked the court to direct the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to stop allocation of electoral symbols to these political parties.

Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2014