ISLAMABAD: The decision-making body of Higher Education Commission is going to meet on Friday after a gap of 32 months.

The 18-member Commission of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) will hold its session for two days (Friday and Saturday) to discuss and ratify the pending policy issues, financial problems facing universities and identify ways of moving forward.

Key items on the agenda include the steps needed to tighten the policy on plagiarism, finalise high profile plagiarism cases and review performance of the Tenure Track System, says a press release issued by the HEC.

Sources said that several high profile cases of plagiarism including those of Executive Director HEC Dr. Arshad Ali, former Chairman HEC Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed and Comsats Rector Raheel Qamar will also likely be taken up the commission.

The plagiarism case of ED HEC was established by Plagiarism Standing Committee of HEC many months ago and in April this year, then chairman HEC Dr. Mukthar, wrote to ministry of federal education that plagiarism case has been established against the ED. However, the ED since then has been defending his case by claiming that he did nothing wrong.

The meeting will be chaired by Chairman HEC Dr Tariq Banuri and attended by Executive Director, HEC Dr Arshad Ali and its members including Shahnaz Wazir Ali, Dr. Faisal Bari, Engineer Farooq Bazai, Prof. Dr. Bhawani Shankar Chowdhry, Dr Naveed A Malik, Dr Sania Nishtar, Dr Javeid Iqbal, Asif Mumtaz Sukhera and senior officials from the federal and provincial governments.

The HEC commission, because of negligence of previous government and ministry of education remained dormant for over two years and the names of members were finally approved by former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on May 30. According to the HEC Ordinance 2002, the HEC commission consists of 18 members, including two federal secretaries, four representatives of the provinces, Chairman HEC, ED and 10 nominees of the prime minister.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2018