LAHORE: Students of the Comsats Institute of Information and Technology on Wednesday announced moving the court against the chairman of the Higher Education Commission over their dual degree issue.

Some 2,800 students of the management sciences and engineering of Comsats are awaiting recognition of their degrees by HEC. The institution was offering a dual degree in collaboration with the Lancaster University.

“We will sue the HEC chairman for recovery of damages amounting to Rs350 million as much of the students’ time has been wasted,” student representatives Muhammad Ali and Osama Jaleel told a press conference here.

They were accompanied by lawyers Barrister Abdullah Malik and advocate Osama Sadoon.

They said the HEC got a temporary stay from the Lahore High Court against this week’s convocation of the varsity.

“After the judgement by LHC in the Comsats DDP case, the institution was allowed to award the dual degrees - Comsats and the Lancaster University (UK) along with their joint transcripts - to the students. We hope to get justice in our case,” Muhammad Ali said.

He said Comsats had succeeded in clinching 18th position among top Western Asian institutions as per the high-quality research outputs ranking table 2016 released by international reputed organisation, Nature.

The students will hold a demonstration outside the HEC regional office in Lahore on Thursday (today).

Published in Dawn, April 28th, 2016