PESHAWAR: The newly-formed Medical Teaching Institutions (MTI) Appellate Tribunal in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is likely to start operations within a month, according to official sources.
The health department had issued a notification on April 15, 2026 regarding amendments to relevant rules to change the composition of MTI Appellate Tribunal.
The provincial government passed Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act (MTIRA), 2015, and later formed MTI Appellate Tribunal to hear the cases of aggrieved employees. The chairman of the tribunal, a retired judge of high court, will be appointed in consultation with the chief justice of Peshawar High Court.
Two other members of the tribunal will be appointed in consultation with chairman from amongst the district and session judges or lawyers with at least 15 year practice.
Experts object to role of govt servants in running the judicial body
The tribunal started work in April 2021 to provide legal framework for governance, accountability and adjudicatory remedies in the hospitals and their affiliated medical and dental colleges covered by MTI Act.
However, in April the government notified amendments to the rules and changed the composition of MTI tribunal. Now it will be headed by health secretary with representatives of law and establishment departments not below the officers of BPS-19 as its members. Another member will be a retired health professional to be nominated for three years.
Health department has already asked all the MTIs to constitute grievance redressal committees (GRCs) as appeals to the tribunal will now be acceptable when decided one way or the other by these committees.
Sources said that amendments to the rules were meant to reduce litigation against the MTI-covered hospitals and medical and dental colleges in the province. However, employees of MTIs argue that how can they expect the GRCs to listen to their appeals against the MTI administration impartially and enable them to get to the tribunal.
“If an employee is aggrieved by the decision about his/her termination from service by the Board of Governors, hospital, medical or nursing director, how can GRC at the same MTI go against the decision,” questioned a senior employee at one of the 10 MTIs while talking to Dawn.
Sources said that the architect of MTIRA had become sick with MTI Appellate Tribunal for granting stay orders against the executive decisions, which were hampering the decision-making process so the composition of the tribunal was changed.
However, experts said that secretaries were government employees with administrative powers and they could not exercise judicial powers to go against the MTIs that were also government-run bodies.
They said that MTI Appellate Tribunal had already stopped functioning and there were still 120 pending cases before it.
Health Secretary Shahidullah Khan told Dawn that a summary for to de-notify the tribunal chairman and selection of a private member was being prepared after which it would start operation.
They said that they had already submitted their stance to a case against the new composition of the tribunal in Peshawar High Court.
The case has been filed by a local lawyer, who requested the court to declare illegal and unconstitutional the notification of April 2026. He said that it had destroyed the constitutional principles of ‘tracheotomy of powers’ as executives had been allowed to control a judicial body.
The petitioner argued that Article 175 of the Constitution expressly stated that executive, legislature and judiciary were to work separately and each shouldn’t intervene in the domain of others whereas the notification would result in direct intervention of the executives running the tribunal and exercising judicial functions.
Officials said that an amendment had already been incorporated to MTIRA, making it mandatory for aggrieved employees of MTIs to first contact GRCs at their respective hospital and move MTI Appellate Tribunal if they were not satisfied with the verdict of the committee.
Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2026