LARKANA: The Sindh High Court, Larkana circuit bench, on Thursday suspended orders of the Chand­ka Medical College principal and Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Medical University admissions director regarding cancellation of two MBBS students’ admission.

Misha Mughal and Rida aka Suman Kalhoro, who were given admission to the CMC for the MBBS 2013-14 session in batch No.42, had challenged the orders through their counsel Sham­s­udin Abbasi and Rasool Bakhsh Soomro.

The matter came up for hearing before the bench comprising Justice Ahmed Ali Sheikh on Thursday.

The petitioners said they applied for admissions on April 21, 2014 against two seats of Mauritius after the SMBBMU admissions director declared the seats vacant upon receiving no application from that country. Registrar Prof Dr Sikandar Mughal sought and obtained the requisite no-objection certificate from the high commissioner/consulate in Islamabad, the petitioners said.

They referred to the two admissions given to Pakistani students Taheer Fatima Mallah and Usama Javed Soomro after reallocating the seats, and said they were currently studying in the MBBS second year at the CMC.

The petitioners submitted that the admission committee headed by the SMBBMU vice chancellor met on June 12, 2014 and unanimously agreed and decided to give admission to the petitioners.

Subsequently, they add­ed, CMC Principal Prof Dr Saifullah Jamro issued a letter dated June 16, 2014 to the petitioners, who were granted admission and allotted the roll numbers.

However, the petitioners submitted, on July 7, 2014, the vice chancellor constituted a five-member committee headed by the Prof Dr Saifullah Jamro for a scrutiny of the process of the late admissions and in the light of its report, the SMBBMU admissions director issued an order cancelling the petitioners’ admission on July 28, 2014.

The petitioners submitted that cancellation was ordered on the excuse of ‘late admissions’ sans perusing the previous record of late admissions by the university and its affiliated colleges.

The petitioners cited the examples of two foreigners’ admission given after reallocation of seats, and argued that on the one hand, two students were given admission in the year 2012-13 and, on the other, the admission of the petitioners were cancelled, which was discrimination.

The petitioners called for declaring the act of cancelling the admission illegal.

The bench ordered that “since this court has already passed ad-interim order in similar circumstances, and in view of above the operation of impugned order No.326 July 28, 2014 issued by the Director Admissions of SMBBMU, and communicated to the petitioners through the letters of the Principal CMC, is suspended. In the meantime, the petitioners are allowed to continue their studies”.

The bench also ordered that this petition, along with another identical one, be fixed for a hearing and notices be issued to all concerned.

The matter was adjourned for a date in office.

Published in Dawn, October 11th, 2014