ISLAMABAD: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has formed a committee to examine a complaint filed by a Pakistani scholar based in Australia who alleged that his paper was stolen by the vice chancellor of a Pakistani university.

Officials from the HEC informed a Senate subcommittee headed by Senator Rana Maqbool Ahmad that the committee will examine the case on Monday and submit a report to the committee in 15 days.

The Subcommittee of Senate Standing Committee on Federal Education and Professional Training held a meeting with Senator Ahmad in the chair.

At the start of the meeting, the committee took up the complaint of the student of Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia, who alleged that his thesis paper was stolen by the vice chancellor of a public sector university in Rahim Yar Khan.

The committee was briefed by the HEC officials about the mechanism followed in checking plagiarism. The severity of the penalty is directly proportional to the ratio of plagiarism in a research journal or thesis paper, they added.

The committee was informed by the vice chancellor of the University of Balochistan that a plagiarism policy in the university had been formulated in 2007 and there had been three cases of plagiarism so far. The vice chancellor deals only with the plagiarism of students and faculty members and research journals directly come under the domain of the HEC.

The committee sought details of plagiarism found in research journals and also directed the HEC to collect details of plagiarism from universities.

The convener of the subcommittee said HEC should strictly deal with whoever was found involved in this crime.

The meeting was also attended by Senator Fawzia Arshad, parliamentary secretary for education, and vice chancellors of various universities.

Published in Dawn, December 29th, 2021