The minister and secretary Higher Education, NWFP, Peshawar, should immediately intervene to take up this issue with the UoP, as it also concerns those government postgraduate colleges of the NWFP that have postgraduate English departments and happen to be affiliated with the UoP.

The Government Postgraduate College Charsadda hasn't admitted students with 45 per cent or more marks in English Elective in BA/BSc to MA English since the establishment of the postgraduate departments in the subjects of English, Political Science, and Economics in 1998, in the college. Students with 45 per cent or more marks either take admission in MA English at the Department of English UoP or elsewhere in other universities. The government postgraduate colleges are only left with the ones who have got less than 45 per cent marks or who have hardly passed their English Elective, in most cases with as low as 24 or 25 marks.

Since 1998, the Government Postgraduate College Charsadda always allowed admission to the students with less than 45 per cent marks in English Elective in BA/BSc in MA English but the UoP never ever warned the college for this so-called violation. It was years later for the session 2005-06 that the UoP warned the college not to violate the established admission criterion of 45 per cent or above marks in English Elective for admission to MA English.

Surprisingly the college didn't receive that warning, and the UoP never stressed on its application as the college in subsequent years continued with allowing admissions to such students until the 2008-09 session when the university warned for the second time and even fined the college. This second warning asks the college to pay Rs23,000 as a fine to the UoP at the rate of Rs1000 per student for violation of the “admission criterion”.

Readers may be amused at finding out that Government Postgraduate College Mardan commenced the MA English classes much earlier than the Charsadda College but the UoP only woke up in the session 2008-09 to regret admitting students to MA English on the grounds discussed above. Mardan College these days is corresponding with the UoP in this connection in order to get their students' admissions to MA English approved.

It is pertinent to mention here that the recently-established universities of Hazara and Malakand have set no such tough rule/criterion for admission to MA English. They only require passing marks in English Elective in BA/BSc for admission to MA English. Actually, a candidate who hasn't even taken English Elective as a subject in BA/BSc can seek admission to MA English in the University of Malakand. Are students of Charsadda/Peshawar or its outskirts more competent or proficient in English as a subject than the ones of Hazara and Malakand universities? Why should the youth of Charsadda and Peshawar with less than 45 per cent marks in English Elective be ineligible to seek admission to MA English, whereas the ones at the universities of Malakand, Hazara and Mardan Write to us at education@dawn.com are treated with so many leniencies?

This admission criterion of the UoP is unjustified, arbitrary, and needless. “Unjustified” because Hazara and Malakand universities have no such rule of admission. “Arbitrary” because the UoP, on the one hand, allows a candidate with simple BA/BSc and no English Elective background, to appear in the MA English exam as a private candidate but on the other, students with English Elective (but with less than 45 per cent marks in it), and taught regularly by five professors at the postgraduate college Charsadda are not eligible for admission to MA English.

The minister and secretary, Higher Education, NWFP, Peshawar, are requested to approach the UoP to soften the rules of admission to MA English so that the college can admit students and this facility of the provision of higher education at the doorsteps of the pupils of Charsadda isn't taken back from it.

And finally the minister and secretary should also keep into consideration the newly-constructed postgraduate block/building worth millions of rupees at the government postgraduate college Charsadda. It had been constructed for the provision of higher education to the residents of Charsadda and its outskirts. Millions of rupees shall go to waste if this postgraduate department of English is closed. If the UoP does not soften its criterion of admission, then the minister and secretary of higher education are requested to de-affiliate all government colleges in the jurisdiction of the UoP and affiliate them with the Islamia College University Peshawar or Hazara, or Malakand or the newly-established Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan.