PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court has directed the Higher Education Commission and Khyber Medical University to respond to a petition challenging the mechanism of admission to medical colleges on 167 seats reserved for the students of the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (now tribal districts).
A bench consisting of Justice Kamran Hayat Miankhel and Justice Shahid Khan fixed Aug 18 for next hearing into the petition with directions to the respondents, including HEC and KMU, to maintain status quo on the matter until then.
The petition is jointly filed by three students from tribal districts, including Aswad Khan and Mohammad Ibrar of Mohmand district and Farhan Afzal of Khyber district, against the ongoing admissions to public sector medical colleges on seats reserved for the students of former Fata on the basis of the overall merit instead of the previous mechanism of quota fixed for each of the tribal districts.
The petitioners requested the court to declare illegal the non-allocation of seats for MBBS (session 2022-23) on population basis by not maintaining the district wise merit list as per seat allocation quota like previous years.
Asks them to maintain status quo on matter until Aug 18
They said that the respondents, by doing away with the previous mechanism of admissions on seats reserved from ex-Fata, had given leverage to one area over other and denied admissions to the candidates of some tribal districts, an act against the principle of equality and justice.
The petitioners requested the court to direct respondents to maintain the district quota wise merit for the admissions to the MBBS (session 2022-23) enabling candidates of all tribal districts to have an equal chance of higher education.
M Asif Yousafzai, lawyer for the petitioners, said the HEC had started a project titled “Provision of Higher Education Opportunities for Students of Balochistan and Erstwhile Fata” under which MBBS seats were filled on the basis of merit but under quota system, certain seats were allocated to each tribal agency (now district) on the basis of population with “merit drawn” for each area among the local candidates.
He said some drastic changes were made by the steering committee of the project regarding marks and merit list of allocated seats.
“After perusing the provisional merit list and the relevant advertisement, the petitioners came to know that the allocation of seats to each district was done away with for the session 2022-23,” he said.
Mr Yousafzai said there were a total of 167 seats for erstwhile Fata and the respondents used to allocate certain seats to each tribal district on the basis of its population.
He added that the merit was to be drawn from among candidates of that particular area without affecting the merit of other areas.
“Now, certain areas have leverage over other areas in the combined merit list as 49 candidates from Bajaur tribal district have been selected, whereas none is selected from Orakzai district and just four from Mohmand district. If the previous mechanism of admissions is restored, the petitioners will also have chances to get admissions,” he said.
The respondents in the petition are the provincial government through health secretary, KMU registrar, the KMU’s admission committee through its chairman, the HEC through its chairman, the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council through its secretary, and project manager for the Provision of Higher Education Opportunities for students of Balochistan and erstwhile Fata.
