KARACHI: Senior Minister for Food and Parliamentary Affairs Nisar Khuhro at a programme held on Wednesday defended the recently passed controversial law on universities, arguing that the government providing five to six billion rupees to the public-sector universities every year needed to ensure accountability of these funds through elected representatives.

“People are objecting that the chief minister has now become the appointing authority for vice chancellors, powers of which were earlier held by the governor.

“But, they should know that the chief minister is a more capable and competent person to appoint vice chancellors as he is an elected representative and answerable to the people of Sindh whereas the governor is a federal nominee whose action can’t be discussed in the provincial assembly.”

Mr Khuhro expressed these views while speaking to journalists after an academic discussion and awards distribution ceremony organised by Autonetics, an IT solution provider initiative.

He also rejected objections to possible changes to the admissions policy of certain universities in Karachi, saying students were being discriminated there on the basis of ‘Karachi’, ‘Sindh’ and ‘Pakistan’ categories.

“This is extremely illogical and discriminatory.

I have huge reservations on this because Karachi and Sindh are not separate entities. Admissions should be given to students from the entire Sindh on merit and not on the basis of their city of residence,” he observed.

On bureaucrats’ representation in the syndicate of universities, he said the government funding the institutions reserved the right to have its nominee on the syndicate to see where the money (provided by the provincial government) was being spent.

“There is no question of nepotism in appointing vice chancellors as all elected representatives are answerable to the people of Sindh,” he said in reply to another question.

Earlier at the awards distribution ceremony, Mr Khuhro claimed that students of public and private universities in Sindh were now “free to think and act” contrary to the past when there was a continued confrontation between students and the system.

Awards’ recipients included Prof Ajmal Khan (Karachi University), Prof Muhammad Tufail (Pro vice chancellor of NED University of Engineering and Technology), Prof Tariq Rafi (Jinnah Sindh Medical University) and Prof Amanullah Abbasi (registrar at Dow University of Health Sciences).

Published in Dawn, March 15th, 2018