Ten years before, a textile mill was converted into a university campus in Balochistan. It has made good progress in the last 10 years with the setting up of various departments and employment of highly professional teachers.

The highly organised structure is commendable. Initially the first vice chancellor served the institute for many years. However the faculty appointed by him mostly by his home province were given scholarships who went abroad never to return back.

It seems as if this decision was taken to facilitate those lecturers on ethnic affiliation. All this was done in the name of progress of Balochistan on a so called open merit.

Initially students from all other provinces outnumbered the native Baloch and Pashtun residents of Balochistan. Even the textile machinery was sold on peanut prices to industrialists of the industrialist region.

One is amazed at the admissions policy at that time which was all Pakistan merit, disregarding the issue of the discriminate numbering system at the Balochistan Board of Intermediate, where the position holder gets hardly 70-75 per cent marks while in the rest of Pakistan the average students get the same number of marks.

In 2007 a new phase of development began. A native of Balochistan, engineer by profession and not having a PhD degree (a basic for any VC as per HEC requirement) admissions policy made a shift in another direction. If one goes through the admission result and criteria of admission it seems that the admission policy is designed in such a way to facilitate students from six to seven districts (predominantly Pashtun areas) and leaves the 23-24 Baloch districts deprived. There was hue and cry about the last several years, but all in vain.

This matter needs to be catered based on logic, understanding of ground realities, location disadvantages, discriminating board, numbering system etc.

Open merit should be the only basis of selection. If only there are equal opportunities offered to far flung areas. In future we need to see an educated Balochistan as an outcome of this university rather than hatching ethnic favouritism.

Such discrimination is against the constitution of Pakistan. If the logic of the university is accepted then our assemblies should only represent the people from Islamabad, Karachi or Lahore because they can speak better English as compared to their rural counterparts.

Some recommendations are as under:

1. Review the admission policy and geographically distribute the seats as in other parts of Pakistan keeping the human rights aspects.

2. Management should not fear any political activity at the university because each and every district of the division will bring its own merit and Baloch students will prove their ability once provided a chance.

3. HEC should take measures to check and verify the alleged unrecognised degrees of higher authorities at BUITEMS.

4. An admission policy based on discrimination and favouritism should end and a logical one should be formulated which should represent the whole of Balochistan.

5. Chief Justice, Governor Balochistan should take action against such intellectual violation of human rights.

6. The human development loss caused due to this policy should be compensated.

7. 50 acres of vacant land in South Quetta (Chiltan area) needs to be developed instead of concentrating the Takathu campus. This land is intentionally left vacant for reasons better known to authorities of the university.

8. The university should develop a peaceful environment and accommodate all classes of society on regional representation rather than becoming a bone of contention.

DR TARIQ ALI Karachi