PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday issued notices to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa higher education department and vice chancellor of Peshawar’s University of Engineering and Technology (UET), seeking their response to a petition challenging the appointment of the latter against that post last year.
A bench consisting of Justice Syed Arshad Ali and Justice Dr Khurshid Iqbal issued the notices after preliminary hearing into the petition of senior UET academician Prof Sahar Noor, seeking declaration that the appointment of VC Sadiq Khattak is illegal and he lacks the required qualification.
The petitioner requested the court to set aside and declare null and void the impugned notification of the VC’s appointment issued in May 2025.
Senior academician insists Sadiq Khattak’s appointment is illegal, he lacks required qualification
He further sought declaration of the court that the VC was not eligible for consideration/ appointment against the post of the VC in terms of the mandatory statutory criteria prescribed under the KP Universities Act, 2012.
The petitioner alleged that the documents and credentials relied upon by the VC to establish his postdoctoral experience were not genuine or verifiable from the relevant institution, University of Georgia, USA.
The respondents in the petition are the chancellor of the UET through the chief secretary, UET through its VC, UET’s registrar, KP Higher Education Department through its secretary and VC Sadiq Khattak.
Lawyers Jehanzeb Mehsud and Fazal Ilahi appeared for the petitioner and said that their client had joined the UET Peshawar in 1997 as a lecturer in the Mechanical Engineering Department.
They said that the petitioner had done his PhD in the year 2007 from the University of Bradford, UK, and he had been serving in the UET as a professor for the last 16 years.
The counsel said that the government in 2022 through an advertisement asked for eligible candidates to apply for appointment against the post of VCs of different universities in KP including the UET.
They said that the petitioner also submitted his application along with the required documents including that of postdoctoral experience, etc. They added that VC Sadiq Khattak had also applied for the said post.
The lawyers added that the said respondent was later notified as VC of the UET by the government through the impugned notification.
They claimed that subsequent to the appointment of Mr Khattak as the VC serious questions arose regarding fulfilment and verification of the mandatory eligibility criteria relief upon by him including the claimed postdoctoral research experience, administrative experience and execution of major research projects.
The counsel claimed that official record available to the petitioner clearly demonstrated that Mr Khattak completed his PhD on Aug 3, 2012, resumed his duties at the UET on Aug 17, 2012, and continued serving at the university during a substantial portion of the period for which postdoctoral fellowship experience had been claimed by him.
They alleged that the postdoctoral fellowship certificate relied upon by Mr Khattak purported to cover the period from April 1, 2012, to March 31, 2013, creating a material inconsistency and overlap with his service at the UET.
The lawyers contended that the available record didn’t establish that the claimed fellowship constituted a valid, fulltime and admissible postdoctoral research experience capable of satisfying the mandatory statutory eligibility requirement prescribed for appointment as VC.
They argued that where eligibility criteria were prescribed by statute, the same must be strictly complied with.
Published in Dawn, August 14th, 2026