LARKANA: A division bench of the Sindh High Court, Larkana circuit, has directed the provincial government to appoint a permanent registrar for the Shaheed Mohatarma Benazir Bhutto Medical University (SMBBMU) as per law within a period of two months.

The bench comprising Justice Zafar Ahmed Rajput and Justice Mohammed Iqbal Kalhoro was seized with a petition filed by incumbent registrar Prof Dr Sikandar Mughal, who is retiring on Jan 5, 2017.

The petitioner through Advocate Shamsuddin Abbasi moved court challenging a corrigendum issued on May 5, 2014 by the chief minister’s secretary for universities and boards. He submitted in court that being a professor of paediatric surgery at the university, he was assigned the additional responsibility of registrar through a notification issued on April 7, 2014 till the selection of a permanent registrar. Immediately after this, the government issued a corrigendum to change the word ‘registrar’ to ‘director finance’, explaining that it was “inadvertently mistyped”.

The petitioner alleged that the correction was mala fide, saying that he had been assigned the additional charge by a competent authority.

Additional Advocate-General Abdul Hamid Bhurgri argued that actually Dr Aurangzed Siyal was assigned the additional charge of registrar in the light of original directives of the chief minister given on April 3, 2014 which was also placed on court record in a statement submitted on Oct 24, 2014 whereby the petitioner was given the charge of finance director. However, while issuing the April 7, 2014 notification the post of finance director was mistakenly typed as ‘registrar’, he claimed.

The bench said it appears from the perusal of the material available on record that under the directives of the chief minister, the petitioner was assigned the additional charge of director finance and subsequently a notification was issued but not as per the directives of the chief minister and due to typographic mistake in the notification he was assigned the additional charge of registrar, instead of director finance. And, therefore, the corrigendum was issued.

The bench said there appeared no mala fide on the part of the secretary to the CMfor universities and boards in issuing the corrigendum.

“Hence the petition on this account is dismissed being devoid of merit along with listed application,” the bench observed. However, it added, in the best interests of the university, the government of Sindh should appoint a permanent registrar for the SMBBMU in accordance with law within two months time. A compliance report be submitted to this court through the additional registrar, it said.

Advocate Asif Hussain Chandio represented the university.

The petitioner had argued that the situation, since the issuance of the notification, had changed as Dr Aurangzeb Siyal had retired on Oct 31, 2016 and the Sindh government had appointed a permanent director finance. Actually the corrigendum was meant for giving additional charge of registrar to Dr Siyal, he claimed.

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2016