LAHORE, Feb 10: The Higher Education Commission has directed all public sector universities to finalise plagiarism cases within three months after receiving a complaint.

HEC’s adviser (quality assurance) Raiz Qureshi told Dawn on Saturday that the varsities had been asked to complete probe into a plagiarism case within three months. He said the HEC would consider suspending funding for the varsities for delaying the process.

He said as many 12 cases of plagiarism of different universities of the country had been surfaced yet. Only the Government College University had completed the inquiry in one such case and also initiated action against the plagiarist, he added.

Mr Qureshi said that the HEC had also sought Governor Khalid Maqbool’s intervention in finalising the case of alleged plagiarism of five faculty members of the Centre for High Energy Physics, Punjab University. He said the commission had asked the PU administration several times to finalise inquiry against them but received no positive response from it so far.

“The HEC is left with no other option but to request the governor, who is the chancellor of the provincial public sector universities, to press the PU administration in this regard,” he added.

It is pertinent to mention that the alleged plagiarism of the CHEP faculty members was surfaced in August last year. The preliminary inquiry had found them guilty and proposed action against them but the administration instead of acting upon on them (recommendations) constituted new committee to probe the matter. This committee also failed to meet its Jan 31 deadline to submit its findings to the authorities concerned. Sources in the varsity said that close association of one of the alleged plagiarists with the vice-chancellor was the main reason for delay.

PU registrar Prof Naeem Khan said the administration had sent a fresh reminder to the inquiry committee to submit its recommendations at the earliest. To a question, he admitted that the accused had committed plagiarism according to the preliminary inquiry, however, no action could be initiated against them without looking into legal formalities.

The HEC has announced a zero tolerance policy against plagiarism. The commission has already declared that the names of plagiarists will be placed on its website once the ongoing plagiarism cases are finalised. It has already provided policy guidelines on plagiarism by either students or teachers and warned them that such intellectual theft will not be tolerated.

A senior academician is of the view that the faculty members of a department usually know the intellectual theft of their colleagues. He says if the trend of revealing plagiarism in the faculties picks up, it will open a Pandora’s box.