ISLAMABAD: In a rare move, the media directorate of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) on Monday issued a statement rejecting the allegations of its Chairman Dr Tariq Javed Banuri about provision of funds to universities on the basis of pick and choose and government’s resistance to auditing of research centres allegedly supervised by former chairman Dr Attaur Rahman.

The HEC chairman’s powers have already been delegated to the executive director by the commission. The strongly worded statement rejected the claims made by Dr Banuri in a TV interview.

However, speaking to Dawn, Dr Banuri also rejected the HEC’s statement and said he was firm on his claim regarding funding to universities and the resistance to auditing of major research institutes, especially the International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS).

The ICCBS has two centres - H.E.J. Research Institute of Chemistry and Dr Panjwani Centre for Molecular Medicine and Drug Research.

He said last year HEC funded some universities in violation of the funding formula, adding the government also had resisted the audit of ICCBS last year.

Media directorate says figure of Rs6bn supplementary grant incorrect; Dr Banuri claims HEC violated universities’ funding formula last year

“Through audit we wanted to know what the contribution of ICCBS was. What type of medicine or vaccine they have produced for this country? But they resisted the audit and when we pressed they said auditors of their choice should be made part of the audit team, which was against the spirit of audit,” Dr Banuri said.

But the statement issued by the media directorate of the HEC defended research centre/s and their funding, which according to Dr Banuri’s last year interview, were associated with former chairman Dr Ata.

Dr Ata is currently chairman of Prime Minister’s Task Force on Science and Technology and a member of the HEC commission, the supreme decision making body of the regulator, which recently delegated powers of the chairman to the ED through a resolution.

Last year, the government had removed Dr Banuri after making an amendment to the HEC ordinance that reduced his four-year term to two years. However, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) restored him on the post last month.

Meanwhile, the federal government has filed an appeal against the IHC order in the Supreme Court. After sacking him last year, the federal government besides two other members appointed Dr Ata as a new member of the commission.

After his removal, Dr Banuri in an interview on a Youtube channel had alleged that apparently for initiating accountability of the three HEC-funded research centres supervised by Dr Ata he had been removed.

He had also alleged that the research centres received around Rs1 billion funds annually but their outcome was not satisfactory, adding when he asked for accountability of these centres the government resisted.

He had also alleged that his objections to the “so-called knowledge economy” project under Dr Ata, which required a funding of Rs30 billion, also did not suit the government.

Dr Ata, however, rejected the allegations last year.

HEC’s statement

The statement of HEC said during a TV programme Dr Banuri tried to portray the special supplementary grant given to the financially distressed universities which was provided after court orders and all necessary approvals as favouritism.

“It is important to highlight that the figure of six billion rupees supplementary grant, quoted by Mr Banuri in the television programme, is not correct. The ECC approved technical supplementary grant of two billion rupees for financially distressed universities after the court order and not as a favour to any institution.”

The HEC said 11 distressed universities were given supplementary funds.

The statement added: “Previously, Tariq Banuri has also given incorrect statements to the press that he was removed from office because he tried to have the accounts of some research centres at Karachi University audited that he claimed are supervised by Dr Ata.” Dr Ata had held no administrative position in any research centre or university for the last 20 years.

According to the website of ICCBS, Dr Ata is its patron-in-chief. The statement said HEC had requested for academic and financial audit of ICCBS.

The HEC said requests were welcomed by the centre in writing, but “Only requirement of the centre was in connection with the academic audit, that it should be carried out by experts in the relevant fields of chemistry and biology, which was reasonable,” the HEC said.

It said that an academic audit of the ICCBS was conducted by 11 international experts in 2018, “who were unanimous in their praise of the high quality of research work being conducted in the centre, and had recommended additional financial support for it,” HEC said.

“The issue therefore was never about the auditing of accounts or transparency, as has been wrongly portrayed by chairman HEC in statements to the press.”

It said the previous HEC had proposed to take away the autonomy and merge the budget of the ICCBS with that of the University of Karachi, which was not possible as the government had a formal agreement with Unesco that its financial autonomy will be maintained. The statement said work of the centre “has been praised by many Nobel laureates and its accounts are regularly audited by the government.

Columnist Mosharraf Zaidi, who had filed a petition in the IHC against the government for removing the HEC chairman, when contacted by Dawn, said:

“The ongoing episodes in HEC are very unfortunate. The most important stakeholders in this entire debate are students. And nobody seemed to be concerned about young Pakistani students. Which is a matter of concern.”

Published in Dawn, February 22nd, 2022