KARACHI, April 25: The Urdu Lughat Board has lost its autonomous status and has become a government department under the federal ministry of education.

Well-placed sources told Dawn on Saturday that an education ministry circular issued recently declared that all those institutions established without legislation had an undefined status and should lose their autonomy.

"The Supreme Court gave a verdict in 1990, ruling that those institutions which had come into being as a result of a cabinet resolution, and not an Act, had an undefined status. According to the ruling, while those institutions were operating as autonomous institutions, they were funded by the government," the sources recalled.

They said in 2000 a presidential directive was issued which sought to define the status of the institutions established through cabinet resolutions. They said a clause of the rules of business which governed state departments, said those institutions which had undefined status were subordinate to the federal government.

"Since a clause already exists, the government has issued no notification. Instead, a circular has been issued under which such institutions have lost their autonomy," they explained.

The sources said that apart from the Urdu Lughat Board, the institutions which would be affected by the circular included Urdu Science Board, National Science Museum, National Educational Equipment Centre, Academy of Education Planning and Development, and Pakistan National Commission for Unesco. The Urdu Lughat Board recently brought out the 19th volume of the Urdu dictionary.