AWKUM dean’s daughter accused of passing papers sans appearing in exam

PESHAWAR: A dean of the Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan has been accused of helping his daughter complete her MPhil illegally.

However, Dean Dr Sultan Ayaz rejected the allegation and claimed that certain elements in the university were trying to malign him. Reliable sources in the University told The News that an MPhil scholar namely Samia Sultan was admitted to the university for MPhil in Zoology in the fall semester of 2018.

The scholar happened to be the daughter of Sultan Ayaz, who served as dean in the same university, the sources said. According to the procedure, during the first two semesters, the students were supposed to complete their coursework and the remaining two semesters were specified to carry out research.

A senior university official told this reporter that during coursework, the students could not submit proposal for research. But the sources said that Samia Sultan not only submitted her proposal, but board of studies and advanced study research board’s meeting were arranged for her during which her proposal was approved in total violation of the university rules, the sources claimed.

Also, during her coursework, she didn’t attend even a single class of the two courses mentioned in her marks sheet, the sources said. She had not even been enrolled in the two courses, the teachers’ concerned confirmed.

The teachers concerned did not include her in the transcript, as she had not been enrolled in the courses. But as the transcript is forwarded to the controller’s office through dean, the transcript was manipulated there with the support of the chairperson of the department, the sources alleged. It was shown in the “manipulated transcript” that she had not only appeared in the papers but also secured above 90 out of 100 marks in each of the subjects, the sources said.

She did her thesis on “Morphological identification of tick Fana and Molecular identification of Rhipicephelus infesting cattle with control measure in district Karak, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.”

Her research was so swiftly processed, evaluated and viva was arranged in record short time and she got the degree even before completion of her four semester, the sources said. Even the students of her class lodged complaints with former vice-chancellor of the university alleging irregularities and undue favour in the process. But no notice was taken of the complaint.

Reached by phone for his comments, Dr Sultan Ayaz rejected the allegations as baseless and bunch of lies. He claimed that there was no truth in the allegations. He said that it was not possible to bypass the university rules. “How can one gets passed in a subject for which he/she has not taken the exam,” he asked.

He said that at the time when she took admission there was no such bar on approval of research proposal/synopsis during coursework. “Even then the synopsis of my daughter had been approved during second semester not the first one,” he said. He claimed that certain elements in the university were trying to malign him.