LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Wednesday directed the Government College University (GCU) Lahore campus to entertain the admission application of a female student, who failed to submit her form due to a technical glitch on the varsity’s online portal.

Student Iman Imran, represented by Advocate Safdar Shaheen Pirzada, named the GCU vice chancellor, registrar, and director admissions as respondents in her petition.

The counsel informed the court that the petitioner completed her O-Levels in 2023 and Intermediate (ICS Statistics) in 2025. He said the petitioner had attempted to apply online for the BS-BAF and BS Law programmes for the 2026 academic session.

However, he said, the petitioner was unable to submit her application by the extended deadline of July 7, 2026, due to persistent server issues, network errors, and varsity portal outages.

He said the GCU administration failed to facilitate the petitioner, despite the fact that she successfully filled out a substantial portion of the online form and filed a written request for an extension.

Advocate Pirzada argued that the petitioner’s academic future should not be jeopardised by administrative and technological lapses.

He asked the court to direct the GCU to accept the petitioner’s physical application and allow her provisional participation in the open-merit admission process.

The judge ordered the GCU administration to entertain the petitioner’s admission form without delay.

The judge disposed of the petition after a counsel for the GCU assured the compliance of the order.

promotions case: Nineteen regular employees of the Government College Women University (GCWU) Sialkot have approached the Lahore High Court (LHC) challenging the varsity administration’s decision to bypass their long-overdue promotions in favour of fresh direct recruitment.

The writ petition, filed by Mudassar Mushtaq Butt and 18 other staff members through Advocate Awais Shahzad Bhatti, names the Punjab Higher Education secretary, the GCWU Sialkot vice chancellor, and the Punjab governor/chancellor as respondents.

The petitioners contend that under university regulations, they became eligible for promotions after five years of service. However, they say, despite multiple representations and reminders, their promotions have been kept pending without any lawful justification.

They also assail recent university’s advertisements seeking external candidates for the very posts they are eligible to occupy.

The petitioners argue that bypassing internal promotion cadres for initial recruitment violates departmental policies and constitutional rights of the existing employees.

The petitioners asks the court to declare the recruitment advertisements illegal, restrain the university from conducting further interviews and direct the authorities to immediately convene a promotion committee to resolve their cases.

Justice Chaudhry Sultan Mahmood sought replies from the chancellor and the vice chancellor on the petition at the next hearing.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2026