Sindh AG told to file response to petition against Universities Act

The Sindh High Court on Tuesday sought replies from the provincial advocate general, assembly speaker and others on a petition against a controversial law passed earlier this year which granted the chief minister broad control over the province’s public sector universities instead of the Sindh governor.

NGO Pasban through its President Altaf Shakoor submitted in the petition that the Sindh Assembly passed the controversial Sindh Universities and Institutes Laws (Amendment) Act 2018 which placed all administrative powers of universities with the CM, taking them away from the governor who is a representative and symbol of the federation in the province.

The petitioner submitted that 24 public sector universities have been affected across Sindh as political and bureaucratic interference has been inducted and injected into them to darken the future of university students.

He submitted that the ruling political party – the Pakistan Peoples Party – unlawfully passed the impugned amendments with incomplete quorum and without fulfilling the lawful and constitutional formalities.

He further said that the law changes the functions undertaken by the academic councils such as formulating admission policies. Moreover, under the law, vice chancellors cannot take administrative decisions to run the day-to-day affairs of the universities as despite the completion of universities’ syndicates, even appointments made by VCs will be subject to the approval of the CM and bureaucratic body. All university teachers and staff were against the impugned law and had rejected it, he said.

According to the petitioner, the intention, aims and objects of the legislature should always be bona fide and in the welfare and interest of the general public and not to sledgehammer the general public by imposing an unwanted and illegal law.

He further stated in the petition that the controversial law snatched the autonomy enjoyed by institutions of higher education and inducted the majority of provincial bureaucrats in the body for fulfilling their whims and desires. The provincial law officer provided a copy of the Sindh Universities (Amendment) Act to the petitioner’s counsel and sought time to file comments on the petition. The SHC’s division bench headed by Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar directed the provincial law officer to respond by December 18.