HYDERABAD, Jan 9: A division bench of the Sindh High Court, Hyderabad circuit, on Tuesday directed the Sindh chief secretary, the health secretary and the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, to file their comments on a constitutional petition filed by some students.

The notices were issued on the petition filed by Samia Noor and Noor M. Memon through Advocate Ejaz Ali Hakro.

Advocate Jhamatmal Jethanand filed another application on behalf of four students: Ayesha Majeed, daughter of A. Majeed Memon (Mirpurkhas); Darshana, daughter of Mahesh (Tharparkar); Aneel, son of Dr Lajpat Rai (Tharparkar); and Umara Nazar (Sanghar): who requested the court to allow them to become interveners, and the IBA be impleaded as one of the respondents in the main petition.

The bench allowed the application with directives to Mr Hakro to amend the petition within three days.

The court ordered that comments be solicited from the IBA, the chief secretary and the health secretary as the matter would be taken up on Jan 15.

The applicants said they had applied for admission to First Year MBBS classes in the Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences for 2001-2002 and added that they had appeared in the tests held by the IBA on Oct 28 and Nov 15 last year.

They said they had approached different authorities working under the respondents and made the same request which had been mentioned in the main petition.

They said it was necessary that the IBA should be included as a respondent, enabling the high court to adjudicate upon and settle all questions.

In the main petition it has been argued that the respondents should consider the results of the SSC and the HSC for admission and drop the entry test.

They informed the court that in the wake of protest and controversy arising out of Oct 28 test the coordinator of IBA had also resigned from the post.

The petitioners made it clear that although the credibility of the entrance test had become doubtful, they had no choice but to appear in second entrance test on Nov 15.

Some 5,426 students appeared in the test but many irregularities were reported during this test.

The IBA reviewed 31 admission cases, and 34 cases of irregularities were detected.

They said the Sindh government and the health secretary had again revoked their decision of holding the third test and validated the result of the second test without taking the fact into consideration that 34 cases of irregularities were detected in the test.

They said the results announced by the boards had remained uncontroversial and accepted by everyone and, therefore, admission should be given on the basis of these results.

A representative of the Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences was in attendance and sought time to file comments.