ISLAMABAD, Aug 28: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) Tuesday stopped the International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI) from withdrawing the special allowance it had been paying to its 64 teachers and asked the university to explain its decision.

IHC Chief Justice Iqbal Hameedur Rehman issued the order while admitting a petition of the teachers of the faculty of management sciences against the IIUI’s decision that would have taken effect on September 1 and lost them between Rs20,000 and Rs50,000 per month.

Before it put off the matter for hearing to September 20, the petitioners’ counsel Shoaib Shaheen told the court that in withdrawing the allowances, the IIUI violated “the settled terms and conditions” of his clients’ employment and the principles of natural justice as the university issued the notification about it without providing the aggrieved teachers a chance to present their case.

He said that unlike other departments of the university, its faculty of management sciences was a self-sustained faculty, generating its own finances.

According to him, the petitioners had left their jobs in other reputable educational institutions and joined IIUI between 2008 to 2010, encouraged by the better opportunities and remuneration it offered, including the incentive of special allowances for acquiring “the most competent faculty available in the market”.

And now, all of a sudden, the university issued a notification which would deprive the petitioners as well as other faculty members of their legitimate right of getting special allowance and they would lose their enthusiasm to sustain the level of quality, he added.

Meanwhile, Justice Mohammad Azim Khan Afridi of the IHC directed Inspector General of Police of Punjab to produce Naveed Butt, a missing spokesman for banned outfit Hizbut Tehrir (HuT) by the next date of hearing.

While hearing a petition of Sadia Rahat, spouse of the missing person, the judge also directed the federal secretaries of interior and defence to submit the reply to the court on next date of hearing which would be fixed by the registrar office.

The FIR registered on June 25, in the matter of the abduction of Naveed Butt, alleged that the directors general of the Inter Services Intelligence and the Military Intelligence, and their deputies in Lahore, were involved in the abduction of the HuT spokesman.

It claimed that Butt was abducted by the officials of intelligence agencies on May 11 when he reached his house at Government Employees Cooperative Housing Society in Lahore along with his schoolgoing children.

According to the petition, Mr Butt had received threatening calls from unknown callers prior to his alleged abduction.