LAHORE: The Bahauddin Zakariya University (BZU) Multan has disaffiliated 30 private law colleges for allegedly giving illegal admissions to 14,000 students in LLB three-year course following the supreme court order to cancel affiliation of the illegal colleges in 2018.

The supreme court in the midst of the last month (Sept 15) had directed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to hold a scrutiny into alleged illegal admissions made by 32 law colleges affiliated with the BZU and gave it four weeks to submit its findings.

A two-member bench, comprising Justice Ijazul Ahsan and Justice Sayyed Mazahar Ali Akbar Naqvi, had heard the matter related to mushroom growth of private law colleges under the BZU umbrella for not implementing the court order.

The court also directed the FIA to establish a money trail to recover cash from the BZU and the private colleges to compensate the students.

The law colleges in question gave admissions to around 14,000 students in the three-year LLB programme in their different campuses in the back dates.

The BZU affiliation committee conducted a meeting of the 30 private colleges on Sept 29 and heard the contentions of the representatives of the colleges.

The committee unanimously agreed to recommend disaffiliation of 30 private colleges (LLB 3-years) as they did not conform to the requirement of affiliation rules.

The committee order, available with Dawn, disaffiliated 30 law colleges, including Askari Law College Burewala, Allama Iqbal Law College Multan, Ayan Law College Multan, Future Law College Multan, Ghazi Khan Law College DG Khan, International Law College Multan, Jinnah Law College DG Khan, Justice Law and Education College Muzaffargarh, Justice Law and Education College Multan, KAIMS International Law College Multan, Central Law College Multan, Multan Law College DG Khan, Leads Universal Law College Khanewal, Leads Law College Layyah, Muhammadan Law College Multan, Mont Law College Multan, Noor Law College Multan, Pakistan Law College Multan, Progressive Law College Vehari, Professional Law College Multan, Shujabad Law College Shujabad, Supreme Law College Multan, South Punjab Law College Multan, Sir Syed Law College Multan, Sargodha Topper Law College Multan, Times Institute Multan, Topper Law College Multan, Multan Law College Multan and Next Law College Multan.

The BZU VC has withdrawn affiliation of the abovementioned law colleges (LLB 3-years) as recommended by the affiliation committee with immediate effect.

Earlier, the then governor Chaudhry Sarwar had ordered the BZU VC to fix the responsibility in the private law colleges scam after a three-member inquiry committee looked into findings of an inquiry and identified the culprits who had allowed 41 affiliated colleges to flout rules to enrol more than 10,000 students.

In its findings, the Dr Omar Chaudhry-led committee (constituted earlier to probe the matter) concluded that each of the 29 approved private colleges had admitted up to 300 students against the BZU sanctioned strength of 100.

It said 10 colleges had no BZU permission at all to go for LLB part-I (three-year course) admissions and hence all their registered students there were prima facie illegal.

It said the colleges had brazenly flouted affiliation and admission rules.

“The Pakistan Law College, Pakpattan, was never affiliated with the BZU and hence all the students registered by it were illegal. It further said the registration of students by some colleges was done without depositing the registration fee.”

The inquiry said there was no mechanism for calculation, collection and verification of registration fee on the part of the BZU and private colleges.

“There is a serious lack of coordination between the registrar office and the treasurer office for verification of university income.”

It also stated that the vouchers of examination fee and registration fee submitted by the colleges were fake.

“It needs to be further verified for how long this practice by the said colleges has been continuing,” the inquiry suggested.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2022