SHC sets aside selection exercise for Fuuast VC’s post

The Sindh High court has set aside the ongoing exercise of shortlisting candidates for the post of vice chancellor of the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology (Fuuast), and directed the search committee to conduct the selection process de novo.

The order came during a hearing of a petition of Prof Mohammad Zahid, who challenged the appointment of the search committee members, and sought reconstitution of the search committee in view of the guidelines set by the Higher Education Commission (HEC).

The petitioner’s counsel said the search committee shortlisted a number of candidates who were less qualified and less competent than the petitioner, who had been a senior member of the same university for 25 years. but despite that his application was rejected without considering his credentials or antecedents due to the bias of two search committee members.

The counsel submitted that the search committee ignored the guidelines of the HEC, and the important guidelines and minimum standards framed by the HEC were ignored when the post was advertised.

He said the committee, in order to accommodate favourites, changed the criteria and requisite qualification for the post of vice chancellor, and it intentionally did not consider the three research grants of the petitioner of less than one million rupees and rejected his client.

The counsel further said that the search committee for the purposes of shortlisting and scoring outsourced their task to independent enumerators, a fact clearly mentioned in the counter affidavit filed by the respondents, which created a serious doubt about the creditability, competence and partiality of the search committee for the appointment of vice chancellor on merit.

The Fuuast and search committee counsel submitted that the committee consists of eminent professionals from the society and also has two former vice chancellors as its members, and that it is functioning as per the rules and regulations and has also adopted the best practice to search and recommend a panel of worthy professionals for the post of vice chancellor.

They submitted that the petitioner failed to obtain 35 marks out of 50 on the basis of information that he himself provided; hence, he was not fit to be called for the interview.

A division bench, headed by Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar, after hearing the arguments of the case, observed that the names of the candidates were never placed or disclosed to the members of the search committee for shortlisting, and scoring was done by an independent enumerator and only the scoring sheets with the file numbers were discussed by the search committee without having the names of any of the candidates.

The court observed that the committee was found to have failed in its duties as it was appointed for recommending the most suitable candidate for appointment as vice chancellor, and that it could not outsource its responsibilities and onerous duty to some independent enumerators. It said a sacred duty was conferred on it to analyse and scrutinise the credentials and antecedents of all candidates who had applied for the position.

It further observed that search committee was not empowered to adopt a unique idea of outsourcing its task to some independent enumerators, which idea is downrightly extraneous and alien to Section 12 of the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Sciences and Technology, Islamabad Ordinance, 2002 wherein the entire responsibility rests upon the search committee to complete the entire exercise and recommend the names of best suitable candidates for the final selection by the chancellor.

The high court set aside the entire exercise of shortlisting and marking candidates by declaring that outsourcing the task of shortlisting and marking/scoring by the search committee to independent enumerators was in violation of the basic structure of Section 12 of the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Sciences and Technology, Islamabad Ordinance, 2002.

The court directed the search committee to conduct a selection process de novo by itself and scrutinise and appraise in a fair and transparent manner all curriculum vitae submitted by candidates for the appointment to the post pursuant to advertisements published in newspapers on August 16, 2020 for inviting applications.

It observed that the search committee would award marks consistent with the yardsticks/benchmarks and shortlist candidates for an interview after due diligence, assessment and proper appraisal of the curriculum vitae/résumé, supporting documents and feedback forms, including the information if any submitted by the candidates for rectifying any bona fide mistake in the feedback form.

The SHC observed that search committee would finalise the selection process within 30 days and thereafter forward the recommendations compliant with Section 12 of the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Sciences and Technology, Islamabad Ordinance, 2002, for the appointment of vice chancellor.