MULTAN: The Lahore High Court (LHC), Multan bench, directed on Friday the syndicate of the Bahauddin Zakariya University (BZU) to probe the credentials of Institute of Social Sciences and Distance Learning Programme director Dr Ishaq Fani and his appointment as a professor.

Petitioner Nayar Abbas made the BZU vice-chancellor, registrar, controller of examination, director of quality enhancement, syndicate members and the Higher Education Commission’s adviser on quality assurance as respondents.

He said the VC appointed Mr Fani as professor of Pakistan Studies on March 21, 2013 against relevant statutes of BZU Act, 1975.

He said that as per the act, in the selection professor and associate professor, the selection board would co-opt or consult three experts in the subject concerned who would be nominated by the VC from the standing list of experts for each subject approved by the syndicate on the recommendation of selection board and revised form time to time. He said that in the case of Dr Fani, the experts were not relevant persons and they were never recommended and approved by the selection board and syndicate and their names do not figure anywhere in the approved list of experts for evaluation of post of professor of Pakistan Studies.

The petitioner says the research papers submitted by Mr Fani are also not relevant to the subject and most of them relates to agriculture and other fields.

“Most importantly, the PhD degree of Mr Fani is also fake, which was awarded him on extraneous grounds on February 20, 2003 as the examiners were never approved from the university’s board of advance research and study,” he said.

He said that the list of examiners was illegally got from the then chairperson directly without approval of the board as required under the law.

“Astonishingly, violating the rules the same chairperson of the then Pakistan Studies Department was not called to sit in viva voice exam of Mr Fani as required under the law and his case was processed in such a hasty way that evaluation reports were managed in one month short time which seems fake and same without having PhD thesis on record in controller office,” he said. He requested the court to declare the appointment of Dr Fani illegal and he may be restrained to perform any duty in the university till the final decision of the petition.

Justice Shams Mehmood Mirza ordered sending the copy of the petition along with its annexure to the BZU syndicate.

Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2015

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