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A physicist who shakes PU's law of gravity
LAHORE, Dec 03, 2007: A physicist is appearing before the Search Committee on
Monday (today) for interview for his selection to the coveted slot of Punjab
University vice-chancellorship or otherwise despite the fact that the
'legitimate' selection process completed a week ago.
A top government
official has intervened to arrange his interview after he missed the scheduled
interviews held from Nov 22 to Nov 24, learnt on Sunday.
Some 46
serving and former vice-chancellors (VCs) and academicians had appeared before
the five-member Higher Education Commission's Vice-Chancellors' Search Committee
between Nov 22 and 24.
According to sources in the education department,
Dr Shaukat Hamid, who is a member of the Planning Commission had applied for the
post but could not appear in the interviews before the Search Committee
consisting of industrialist-cum-educationist Syed Babar Ali (head), former
federal minister Sartaj Aziz, University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore,
VC Muhammad Akram, Punjab Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) Najibullah Malik and
provincial education secretary.
"Now on the intervention of a top
government officer, his interview has been arranged for Dec 3," the sources
said.
"This is a mockery of the selection process. Once the whole process
is completed, how on somebody's intervention it can be brought back to square
one," they expressed surprise and added that this would raise a question mark on
the transparency of the whole selection process.
They said that going for
interview of other candidates after the due date meant that the 46 candidates
who had gone through the process were not up to the mark.
ACS Najibullah
Malik said that Hamid could not appear before the Search Committee because
of his preoccupation. He said it was prerogative of the committee to conduct or
re-conduct interviews for the purpose irrespective of specific dates.
On
the basis of interviews, the committee had to shortlist the names of the
candidates, conduct their detailed interviews and recommend three of them to the
chief minister to select one of them for the post, he added.
Punjab
University Academic Staff Association (PUASA) president Prof Mumtaz Salik said that the body did not accept the 'legality' of the HEC's Search Committee.
He said how could the people running private universities were authorised to
choose the VC of a public sector university? "It is an insult for the people who
have spent their lives in the public sector universities."
Prof Salik
said the PUASA and faculty members would not accept any 'outsider VC' and if the
committee tried to do this, they would resist the move and not allow him to
enter the campus.
He said the teachers' body had already conveyed this
demand to the chancellor and demanded that the new VC should be from among three
or four senior-most PU professors. "Only a PU teacher can understand how to run
the affairs of the university magnificently," he added.
Another senior PU
teacher said that since the PU had been in a grip of students' politics, a lot
more was depended on the selection of the new VC. "If the new VC had a soft
corner for a particular students body, the varsity could not be de-politicised,"
he maintained. Dawn
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