KARACHI: A Karachi University body formed to scrutinise the credentials of candidates who applied for the posts of professors and associate professors in the Department of Urdu has allegedly accepted the school and college teaching experience of certain individuals in violation of the set criteria, Dawn has learnt.

Sources said that a scrutiny committee was formed to shortlist candidates who had applied for the posts in their respective departments advertised by the university in 2019.

As per the 2019 advertisement for faculty positions at the KU, teachers are required to meet certain criteria with specific teaching experience.

According to the requirements, for the post of professor and associate professor a candidate should have at least 15 years and 10 years of “teaching/research experience in a HEC-recognised university or a postgraduate institution” respectively.

However, a faculty member from the KU’s Urdu department, who wished not to be named, said that the scrutiny committee formed to shortlist candidates of the Urdu department had allegedly violated the experience rule as they had approved the credentials of at least two serving teachers for the position of professor and associate professor by counting their teaching experience of school and college.

She alleged that the said teachers ‘lacked’ required teaching experience in an HEC-recognised university or a postgraduate institution, however, not only their college, but also school experience was counted in violation of the set criteria and rules, which could only be described as “favouritism and nepotism”.

She said that one of the teachers who was made eligible unjustly was a relative of a faculty member, who teaches at the Urdu department.

The scrutiny committee that made faculty members eligible for promotions and selections comprised Dr Nusrat Idrees, the then dean of KU Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, then registrar Prof Dr Imran Ahmed Siddiqui, and chairpersons of the departments concerned, the sources said.

When Dawn approached Urdu department chairperson Dr Uzma Farman over the phone, she said she was “not aware of any such thing” and did not want to talk about it. She then dismissed the call.

Dr Nusrat Idrees, the former dean who is currently a member of the KU syndicate, neither denied nor confirmed the allegations and said, “Hundreds of applicants were scrutinised at that time” and therefore, she did not “remember any such thing”.

Incumbent Dean Dr Shaista Tabassum refused to comment when Dawn reached out to her for version.

However, a source close to the incumbent dean said that one teacher in the Department of History had tried to get a similar approval for eligibility, but Dr Tabassum had refused to count his college teaching experience.

Another source said that this was just the tip of the iceberg as similar violations were made in various departments and in some cases the candidate concerned got promoted to the post of professor in BS-21.

They said that the scrutiny committees concerned kept Vice Chancellor Dr Khalid Mehmood Iraqi as well as the selection board in the dark. They said that had the VC known about these irregularities he would have scrapped the entire process.

The KU VC was not available for comments despite repeated attempts.

Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2024