PESHAWAR, Aug 24: Four elected syndicate members of the Peshawar University have termed the syndicate meeting illegal and asked NWFP Governor Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai to take notice of the arbitrary decision of the vice-chancellor.

The 397th meeting of the syndicate was held on Thursday. Despite the lack of quorum, the meeting passed the agenda, sources quoted the members as saying.

They said the syndicate was required to hold its meeting with 60 per cent presence of its 21 members. “The agenda was approved by 10 members, which is illegal,” they said. “It is for the first time in the varsity’s history that the meeting has been held in four sittings.”

They said that the 21-member syndicate had only six elected members.

The sources said that initially there were 14 members present in the meeting, but four of them staged a walkout allegedly due to the unbecoming attitude of the vice-chancellor. The members who boycotted the meting alleged that the vice-chancellor turned down their request of converting the termination order of a lecturer into resignation.

The lecturer was terminated from the service last year. The university had made an offer to the lecturer that his termination order would be converted into resignation if he deposited the amount outstanding against him, the sources said.

Another lecturer, who has been abroad for one year in connection with higher studies, has made a similar request to the university administration that his termination should be converted into resignation and has offered Rs300,000 outstanding against him through a syndicate member.

But the university has turned down his request. On other hand, it had made an offer to a woman lecturer to deposit the outstanding amount and get her termination converted into resignation, the sources said, adding that the four syndicate members boycotted the meeting over this issue.

A syndicate member told Dawn that the meeting had been held in violation of the rules and lack of quorum.

A spokesman for the University of Peshawar said that the 397th meeting of the syndicate passed its agenda in the 4th sitting. It took important academic and administrative decisions. He said the meeting had continued in a smooth manner despite a walkout by four members.

“The reason for their walkout was that one of them was trying to oppose a decision the syndicate was going to take with regard to a lecturer who has been absent from his duties for a long time,” the spokesman said.

In case of the decision, the member feared financial implication for himself as he was guarantor in the case, he said.