ISLAMABAD, Feb 26: Running against time, the National Assembly on Tuesday gave its nod to another of what some critics regard as too many universities coming to Islamabad in a hurry.

A private bill providing for the establishment of what will be known as Capital University, Islamabad, was rushed through the house without going through the usual procedure of vetting by a house standing committee.

This became the fifth university bill rushed through the National Assembly in recent weeks, after eyebrows were raised about the previous ones both on procedural and political grounds.

Three of these bills, passed by the National Assembly last month, prompted a senior official of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) to object to the onrush before a standing committee of the Senate for lack of HEC approval, before the upper house too endorsed all these bills this month.

However, when another government bill, seeking to upgrade Islamabad’s main government hospital — the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences — to a university, was passed by the lower house last week, it was met with a noisy opposition protest for naming the institution after executed former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. That bill is now before the Senate while another bill to provide the establishment of a Capital University for Science and Technology is with the lower house standing committee on education.

On Tuesday, when the National Assembly took up the Capital University, Islamabad, Bill, authored by Yasmeen Rehman of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, some objections were raised over hurrying with the legislation without referring it to the concerned standing committee, with the minister for education and training, Sheikh Waqas Akram, being unsure whether his ministry had approved of this project.

Ms Yasmeen said that while the law ministry was on board, she would welcome input from other sources, which could come when the bill goes to the Senate, but wanted its passage by the National Assembly now because of very little time left for private bills while the house is to run out its five-year term on March 16.

The legislators’ appetite for new private universities has surfaced only recently while many of them are still haunted by a Musharraf-era decree, made part of the Constitution, qualifying only holders of university degrees to contest elections to parliament and provincial assemblies.

While that requirement was scrapped by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution passed by the present parliament and several lawmakers lost their seats for contesting the last elections in 2008 with fake degrees, the Election Commission is still pursuing many to verify the genuineness of their degrees submitted in 2008 to clear them for the next elections.