ISLAMABAD: The executive director of Higher Education Commission (HEC), Dr Arshad Ali, resigned amid allegations he was involved in plagiarism.

Executive Director is a powerful position in the HEC because the ED acts as principal accounting officer of the organisation. Mr Ali was appointed to the post in January 2016.

The plagiarism case against Mr Ali was initiated by HEC’s Plagiarism Standing Committee months ago and in April this year the then HEC chairman wrote to the ministry of federal education that the case had been established against the executive director.

However, the ED since then had been claiming that he did nothing wrong.

According to HEC’s Turnitin App, his research paper published in 2014 titled “A Taxonomy and Survey of Grid Resource Planning and Reservation Systems for Grid Enabled Analysis Environment,” was heavily copied from a research paper of a foreign author.

The plagiarism committee’s finding was considered by the HEC which met the other day in which members expressed their concerns over plagiarism committed by the executive director.

HEC chairman Dr Tariq Bunari is scheduled to hold a press conference on Monday (today) to announce various decisions taken by the commission.

However, on Sunday it emerged that ED has tendered his resignation.

HEC spokeswoman Aayesha Ikram said: “Dr Arshad Ali has resigned on the basis of his own decision in order to prevent further adverse impact upon the organisation because of the ongoing controversy over the allegation against him.”

Efforts were made on Sunday night to contact Mr Ali to get his point of view, but he could not be reached.

Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2018