PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Wednesday directed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Private Schools Regulatory Authority (PSRA) to respond to a petition challenging the watchdog’s recent meeting over the absence of a quorum.

A bench consisting of Justice Mohammad Ibrahim Khan and Justice Shakeel Ahmad fixed Oct 25 for the next hearing into the petition of Mardan resident Sultan Mohammad, who insisted that the PSRA had held a meeting on June 3 and made important decisions though a quorum wasn’t present.

It also ordered the PSRA managing director to appear before it on the next hearing for responding to the points raised by the petitioner.

The petitioner requested the court to declare the June 3 decisions by the regulator for schools illegal, unlawful, and against the spirit of sections 4 and 7(3) of the KPPSRA Act, 2017.

Court asks PSRA to respond to petition

He also sought an interim relief by requesting the court to declare that the regulator’s decisions in question won’t take effect until the final disposal of the petition.

Advocate Nasir Naeem Umarkhaili appeared for the petitioner in the court and said the provincial government had enacted the KPPSRA Act in 2017 to establish an authority to register and regulate functions of private schools in the province.

He said that Section 4 of the law defined the composition of the 15-member authority according to which it should comprise members including the secretary and special secretary elementary and secondary education department, secretaries of the finance and establishment departments, director (elementary and secondary education), four members from private schools, three from parents, two from public sector educationists to be nominated by the government for three years and its managing director as its secretary.

The lawyer contended that under the law, 50 per cent of the total members made a quorum in the authority’s meeting.

He said the PSRA’s June 3 meeting was attended by eight people, including the elementary education secretary and the authority’s managing director.

The counsel, however, said that the finance and establishment secretaries were represented by a deputy director and a section officer, respectively, in the meeting though their respective secretaries didn’t nominate them for it.

He said that the PSRA, in that meeting, allowed some privately-owned educational institutions to increase fee.

The lawyer said that his client, being aggrieved by that meeting, formally requested the authority last month to review the decision, but to no avail.

The bench asked him whether his client was an aggrieved person in terms of Article 199 of the Constitution that he had filed the petition.

The counsel said that being a citizen of the country, it was his fundamental right to approach the court against any decision by which he was aggrieved.

He argued that the decisions of the regulator affected the petitioner as well as scores of other parents.

The lawyer contended that under Section 7(3) of the Act, 50 per cent of members were required to be present in the PSRA meeting to make a quorum.

He added that in the past, the authority allowed an increase in the monthly fee of several educational institutions causing problems for many parents.

Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2022