PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has made drastic changes to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Universities Act, 2012, doing away with the role of the syndicates of the public sector universities in the removal of vice-chancellors.

Now, the chancellor can send a vice-chancellor packing on the advice of the chief minister only.

These changes made to different provisions of the law, including those on the appointment and removal of a vice chancellor have been introduced by the promulgation of the KP Universities (Amendment) Ordinance, 2016, which is likely to be notified by the law department in a day or so, say the sources privy to the development.

Earlier, a vice chancellor could only be removed by the chancellor i.e. the provincial governor, on the advice of the chief minister and that, too, under certain conditions in case of substantiated allegations of gross misconduct, inefficiency, corruption, violation of budgetary provisions and moral turpitude.

Drastic changes made to KP Universities Act 2012 through ordinance

The new section added to the law i.e. 12(7) states: “The VC shall hold the office during the pleasure of the chancellor provided that before removing a VC from his position, the chancellor may grant an opportunity of personal hearing to the VC.”

The sources said the previous procedure of VC removal was not that simple. They said under that procedure, the chancellor needed a favourable resolution of the relevant university syndicate for the vice-chancellor’s removal besides the chief minister’s advice.

Under the changes to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Universities Act, 2012, the provincial government also relaxed the procedure to appoint vice chancellors to public sector universities by reducing their research papers from 40 to 15.

Major amendments are introduced in four main parts of the law including appointment and removal of the vice chancellors, syndicate and senate.

The promulgation of the ordinance paved the way for the appointment of VCs in nine government universities in the province as their appointment was delayed for the amendments to the existing law especially those dealing with the criteria for the VCs’ appointment.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Sardar Mahtab Ahmad Khan, who is the chancellor of the public sector universities, had signed the ordinance on Feb 8, which will most probably be notified by the provincial law department tomorrow (Thursday), according to sources.

Minor amendments have also been made to the law through the ordinance.

In the ordinance, the number of research publications for the VC has been reduced from 40 to 15, while the condition of impact factors of above 1.0 in the case of candidates in the fields of agriculture, science or engineering has also abolished.

Similarly, experience for the VC’s appointment in the field of higher education has also been reduced from 20 years to 15 in teaching and/or research, in a university/ well-established institution of repute at the post-graduate levels.

The qualification for the appointment of VCs was relaxed because the committee for the appointment of VCs failed to have proper candidate for the appointment of two universities a few months ago, sources said.

In the ordinance, two nominees of the chancellors and secretaries of the establishment and finance departments have been excluded from the syndicate.

A new section has been inserted in the law to introduce the post of the pro-vice-chancellor.

Section 12-A of the ordinance states, “there shall be a pro-vice-chancellor of a university to be appointed by the chancellor from amongst the three senior most deans or teachers, for a period of two years to act as officiating VC or acting VC, as the case may be.”

Published in Dawn, February 11th, 2016