PESHAWAR, May 5: The Peshawar High Court has summoned the Vice-Chancellor of Al-Khair University, Islamabad, in connection with the delay in issuance of degrees to students.

A two-member bench comprising Justice Tallat Qayyum Qureshi and Justice Dost Muhammad Khan fixed May 19 for next hearing and directed the registrar, controller and the Peshawar campus of the university to file comments within a fortnight.

The bench expressed annoyance over inordinate delay in the issuance of degrees to the students who had completed their studies in the Peshawar campus of the university. The bench issued a show-cause notice to the VC and the registrar of the university.

The bench asked them as to why the NOC granted to the university for operation in the NWFP should not be cancelled and punitive action recommended against the officers of the university by the competent authority.

Six writ petitions have been filed by Noorul Ameen and other students, claiming that they had passed examination in different categories in the Peshawar campus, but for the last more than four years the authorities of Al-Khair University had not been issuing degrees to them on one pretext or another.

Advocate Malik Iltaf appeared for the university and stated that though the degrees for countersignatures of the chancellor of the university (president of Azad Jammu and Kashmir) had been submitted but the same had not yet been countersigned by him to-date.

He sought further time enabling the respondents to procure the signatures of the chancellor on the degrees in question. The petitioners claimed that they had been requesting the vice-chancellor, controller and registrar to issue them degrees but to no avail.

They added that they had also sent applications to the Higher Education Commission and contacted the Private Educational Institutions Regulatory Authority, NWFP, but they also did not help them in that regard.