PESHAWAR, July 6: The administration of public sector colleges across the province on Saturday postponed admissions to the intermediate classes for indefinite period following a notification in this regard by the Higher Education Department (HED), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The HED issued the notification on Friday in accordance with the July 4 interim ruling of the Peshawar High Court directing that the admission process wherein the submission of domicile certificate was made compulsory along with the application forms should be stopped till next date. The court would again hear the case on July 9.

The department directed all the government colleges on Friday to postpone the admission process till further directives by the court.

In the notification, the HED has also directed the colleges to accept the admission forms without domicile certificate in the light of the PHC directives. Generally, the submission of domicile certificate along with application form was compulsory.

“The display of merit list of the candidates/students seeking admission to first year FA/FSc in Government Colleges (boys and girls) and in the constituent colleges of the public sector universities has been stayed till further orders by the Peshawar High Court,” states the notification.

It says that the admission forms of the candidates/students shall not be rejected for want of domicile certificate. While preparing the merit list, the admission for candidates deficient in respect of domicile certificate shall be considered. However, the merit list shall not be made public till further orders to be passed on July 9 by the court, it said.

The government colleges had set different dates for display of merit lists from July 6 to 10. According to officials of different government colleges, the dates for display merit lists have already been communicated to the students.

The students could suffer as it was not possible to communicate the decision to thousands of applicants who would visit the respective colleges according to the already given schedule.

The notification has also been issued to such colleges where there is no condition of submission of domicile certificate. In one of the prestigious colleges for girls – Jinnah College for Women, Peshawar – the interview process started on Friday, while Saturday was fixed for further interviews in pre-medical group. Hundreds of students along with their parents turned up at the college on Saturday and for their utter surprise they found a notice displayed there stating that the admission process had been postponed. Similarly, around 15,000 students have submitted forms for admission to the Government Superior Science College, Peshawar, and the merit list was scheduled to be displayed on Tuesday (July 9). An official at the college said that it was impossible to contact these 15,000 applicants and intimate them about postponement of the admission process.

Earlier, advocate Mohammad Issa Khan had filed a writ petition in the high court challenging the mechanism of preparation of domicile certificates, which had created several problems and complications for the students.

The petitioner had stated that in past the domicile form was available for Rs10 from any stationary shop and it used to be prepared through a simple process involving a union council nazim concerned and the district officer revenue. The advocate stated that now the government had changed the mechanism and one has also to visit the office of deputy commissioner to get a domicile form for Rs30. He stated that the government had now included several revenue officials in the process from whom attestation was mandatory, which had made the getting of domicile for students a complicated and time-consuming process.