PESHAWAR, Nov 24: The governor NWFP, Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, has intervened to resolve the controversy engulfing the Institute of Management Sciences (IMS), which has made the future of a large number of students uncertain.

A provincial government notification on Friday said that due to some misunderstanding orders in this regard were delayed. However, now due to the governor’s intervention, the matter had been resolved and a notification to this effect would be issued by the University of Peshawar shortly.

The university had created an Institute of Management Sciences (IMS) in 1994. A large number of students took admission in it thinking that they would be entitled to the university facilities.

While talking to Dawn on Friday here, a group of the IMS students said that instead of taking admission in private institutions, they opted for the IMS because the admission was advertised by the University of Peshawar. They stated: “We were enrolled and given hostels accommodation, identity cards, and detailed marks certificates by the university.”

They added that without considering the needs of the students, two separate departments - Institute of Management Studies and Institute of Management Sciences were created sometime back. All the students had been taken over by the Institute of Management Sciences, which was declared an autonomous body. Owing to the differences between the director Institute of Management Studies Dr Hidayat-ur-Rehman, and an official of the university, it was refused affiliation.

They also said that at the time of the bifurcation of the two departments, the staff members were given the choice to joining any of the departments, but not to the students. About 900 students were ignored in this important decision, they said.

All the students said that they did not want affiliation and declared: “we are students of the university and do not need any further affiliation.” For a Master’s in Business Administration, there is no need of two departments, they remarked.