NTS chief moves IHC against plagiarism probe

ISLAMABAD: The chief executive officer of National Testing Service (NTS) Dr Haroon Rashid has moved the Islamabad High Court (IHC) against the Higher Education Commission (HEC) for initiating a probe into his Phd thesis which is allegedly plagiarized upto 72%.
The case has been placed in IHC cause list for today (Thursday). Chief Justice IHC, Justice Muhammad Anwar Khan Kasi will hear the petition of Dr Haroon Rashid while HEC counsel will submit the commission’s response before the court.
Dr Haroon who is also the pro-Rector of COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) has dismissed allegations of plagiarism in his petition.The HEC had written a letter to CIIT reactor Dr SM Zaidi urging him to conduct an unbiased inquiry into the plagiarism case against Dr Haroon and submit the outcomes of investigation within 90 days.
The initial probe by HEC Quality Assurance (QA) Division had revealed that 72 per cent content of the PhD thesis of NTS chief was plagiarised.The thesis, “Parallel Scientific Applications Scheduling on Distributed Computing System”, was submitted with Preston University in 2006
However, CIIT has forwarded the directions to Preston University which awarded PhD degree to Dr Haroon to investigate the matter.When contacted by The News, Preston’s Director Academics Javed Khan said the probe into the plagiarism allegations has been started by the university but the same has been halted after the IHC issued a restraining order.
“We had made a committee to probe the allegations against Dr Haroon Rashid after receiving letter from CIIT. The committee held a couple of meeting before the stay order was issued,” he said.He refused to share the initial outcome of the probe saying the university has to maintain secrecy to ensure impartiality.
Javed Khan said under HEC plagiarism policy, university has to complete investigation within 60 days.When contacted, Dr Haroon said the case is pending in the case so he can’t comment on the merit of case.
A spokesperson of the HEC told The News that under its plagiarism policy commission has to wait for 90 days for the outcome of the plagiarism probe by the university.“If any case is delayed beyond three months, than HEC may take the case itself,” the spokesperson said adding that the commission will submit its response before the IHC on Thursday.
Under the HEC’s plagiarism rules, Dr Haroon is facing dismissal from job if allegations are confirmed in further probe. In a previous interview with The News, Dr Haroon had claimed that HEC’s current plagiarism rules can’t be applied on him as he finished his PhD in 2006 while the rules were formulated later.