SHC orders framing rules for PMC council members’ appointment

The Sindh High Court (SHC) has directed the national health ministry to frame rules for the appointment of the members of the Pakistan Medical Commission’s (PMC) council within 90 days so that future appointments may be made in accordance with the prescribed procedure in the rules.

Issuing a detailed judgment on petitions challenging vires of the section 18 of the Pakistan Medical Commission Act, 2020 under which a central authority was constituted to conduct medical and dental colleges and universities admission tests (MDCAT) anywhere in the country, a division bench of the SHC headed by Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar declared that the sections 4 and 18 of the Act were not in the contravention of the constitution.

The SHC observed that under the Section 18 of the PMC Act, only single test had been made a mandatory requirement for all the students seeking admissions to medical or dental under-graduate programmes anywhere in Pakistan.

The bench observed that under the sub-section (3) of the Section 18 of the PMC Act, it was clearly provided that the admissions to medical or dental programmes conducted by public colleges shall be regulated as per the policy of the provincial governments strictly on merit and admissions to a private college shall be in accordance with the criteria and requirements stipulated by the private college at least one year in advance of admissions including any additional entrance test as may be conducted by a private college subject to any conditions imposed by the relevant university to which such college was affiliated.

The SHC observed that a proviso was also attached that the marks obtained by a student in the MDCAT conducted by the authority shall constitute a minimum fifty percent of the weightage for the purposes of admission in the public colleges, and it was an admitted fact that the PMC admission regulations shall be applicable to all private and public medical and dental college admissions in Pakistan for the 2020-2021 session only.

The high court observed that it was argued that since the private medical colleges could not be able to submit their admission policy one year in advance before the present MDCAT, therefore, this aspect has been covered in the PMC Admission Regulations 2020-2021 for this year only. The SHC declared that the overlap in the legislative space between the federation and the province over standards in institutions of higher education and education and the limits of exclusivity under the Article 142 of the Constitution could be resolved through purposive interpretation with a clear constitutional purpose in mind.

The high court observed that legislative subjects of standards in the institutions of higher education and education have to be contextualized within the constitutional architecture of federalism and made to co-exist under the principles of cooperative federalism.

The high court remarked that the cooperative federalism flowing through the constitution helps prevail over and dilute the exclusivity of the Article 142 into a more workable and constitutionally compliant inclusivity, adding that only in the cases of irreconcilable inconsistency between the federal and provincial statutes, the Article 143 provides a solution, but only as a last recourse.

Preventive detention

A day earlier, in a case pertaining to the preventive detention of a proscribed organisation’s activist, who was detained despite being released in the Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation car bombing case in April, the Sindh advocate general (AG) argued before the SHC that the case was not justiciable before the court.

Concluding arguments on a petition of Aziza Naeem who had challenged the detention of her son-in-law Abdul Hameed Bugti under the anti-terrorism law, the AG submitted that the order for the preventive detention of the man was issued due to intelligence agencies’ reports and such detention was a lawful order issued by the home department.

The AG submitted that the petitioner’s son-in-law was affiliated with the proscribed Balochistan Liberation Army and constitutional rights provided under the Article 10 of the constitution to the accused shall not be provided to the suspect as the detainee was ‘enemy alien’.

He requested the high court to dismiss the petition by declaring the preventive detention of the the detainee as lawful. The petitioner had submitted in the petition that her son-in-law was incarcerated in prison for his alleged involvement in PIDC car bombing case for the last 14 years and he was exonerated by the SHC on April 9 due to lack of evidence. She submitted that the prison authorities refused to release the detainee and first detained him under the maintenance of public order and later under the anti-terrorism law.