PESHAWAR, Oct 18: A two-member Peshawar High Court bench has directed the Higher Education Commission (HEC) not to take any action against the centres opened by Sarhad University of Science and Technology, a private institute, till its next order.

The bench comprising Justice Nasirul Mulk and Justice Ijaz Afzal directed the HEC chairman to file comments within a fortnight in reply to a writ petition filed by the university challenging the HEC orders of winding up its centres of distant/virtual education across the country, excluding the NWFP.

The bench also directed the high court office to fix the plea for hearing in the last week of this month.

The university has enlisted 33 centres throughout Pakistan and one in Kuwait.

The petitioner stated that the HEC had conceived the said centres as campuses and directed him to seek permission of the public sector universities and the provincial governments concerned for setting up campuses.

The petitioner stated that he duly replied to the objection letters of HEC member Professor Dr Sohail H. Haqvi explaining that these centres were not the campuses.

However, the member through a letter on Sept 18, termed the centres unlawful campuses and directed the institution to wind up them and restrict operation to the limits of the NWFP.

Advocate Yahya Afridi appeared for the petitioner and argued that the university was created through NWFP Ordinance XXIV 2001. In February 2003, the federal cabinet had decided to give the chartered educational institutions in private sector five years to fulfil the recently-introduced minimum requirements of facilities supposed to be provided by private universities, he told the court.

Mr Afridi informed that the charter allowed the petitioner to establish a faculty for distant/virtual education.

The petitioner stated that the educational institutes facilitating distant\ virtual learning were called centres.

This mode of education, he said, was based on the pattern adopted and carried out by Allama Iqbal Open University and The Virtual University.

The petitioner has requested the high court to direct the HEC to allow the petitioner for imparting distant education throughout Pakistan as per its charter.