PESHAWAR: Five senior academics have petitioned the Peshawar High Court for contempt proceedings against the provincial chief secretary and three other officials, accusing them of not implementing the judgement about the appointment of vice chancellors to several public sector universities in the province.

A contempt petition was filed by Dr Aurangzeb Khan, a professor at the University of Science and Technology, Bannu, and four other educators, requesting the court to prosecute and punish the respondents including the Chief Secretary Nadeem Aslam Chaudhry, secretaries of higher education, law and establishment departments, Kamran Ahmad Afridi, Akhter Saeed Turk and Mohammad Zubair, respectively.

These petitioners had earlier filed a plea for declaring as illegal the KP government’s move to reinitiate the process for appointing VCs to 19 public sector universities in the province.

They had challenged the provincial cabinet’s July 12 decision regarding non-appointment of the petitioners as VCs and the reconstitution of the academic search committee (ASC) for VCs’ appointments.

Five senior academics petitioned high court over non-implementation of judgement

They had also requested the court to strike down the impugned July 27 advertisement for the appointment of VCs to 19 public sector universities.

A bench consisting of Justice Ijaz Anwar and Justice Mohammad Ijaz Khan had allowed that petition on Aug 22 and had ordered: “The process of re-advertising the position of VCs of government universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is struck down. The respondents are directed to place the recommendations made by the academic search committee before the worthy Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for approval in accordance with Section 12 of the Act (KP Universities Act), 2012.”

Senior lawyer Aamir Javed has filed the contempt petition on behalf of the petitioners stating that the contemnor respondents despite the lapse of over one month now had willfully defied the judgment so passed in favour of the petitioners and were hell bent to defy and ignore the binding edict of the high court.

The petitioners have said that there were no restraining orders from the Supreme Court nor had the judgment been suspended, rather the Supreme Court was seized with a suo motu case about public sector universities functioning in the absence of full-time VCs. They added that in that case the provincial government had taken a plea before the apex court that the process of the appointment of VCs was underway and would be completed shortly.

They added that the acts on the part of the respondents were patently contemptuous and rendered them liable for penal action.

In the main petition, the petitioners had argued that the caretaker provincial government had approved their names for appointment as VCs of five public sector universities on the recommendation of ASC.

They, however, said the present government, instead of forwarding their names to the KP governor, who is the chancellor of universities, for appointments, re-advertised those posts on July 27 in an arbitrary manner.

The Advocate General Shah Faisal Uthmankhel had opposed that petition contending that the caretaker government had overstepped its mandate while reconstituting the ASC when some of its members had resigned.

The bench had ruled that no doubt, Section 230 of the Elections Act prohibited the caretaker government from taking major policy decisions but it was not restrained from performing functions to attend to day-to-day affairs which were necessary to run the affairs of the government.

It added that the decision to initiate the process for appointment of VCs was duly taken by the previous elected government and it was during that process that when some of the members of the ASC had resigned, it was the duty of the caretaker government to have appointed ASC, substituting the members who had resigned.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2024