KARACHI: It has been revealed that the KU has undergone serious legal violations to award PhD degree to a journalist.
As per record, the educational reporter of a reputed daily newspaper sought admission in M.Phil in 1997. After about fifteen years in July 2012, the same reporter submitted an application admitting that the period of his M. Phil has ended in 2002 but since his research thesis is now complete, he maybe permitted to submit the thesis. The permission was granted as a one time special chance, however, after three more years in 2015, another application was filed asking for three months additional time to complete the thesis.
To this, the university administration not only gave him fresh admission, but also converted the admission to PhD degree instead of MPhil. As per regulations, a candidate seeking a fresh admission in any degree must submit admission form, and go through all procedure of admission office which was totally ignored in the case of this candidate. So much so that as per record, the admission list of candidates for the said year does not have the name of this candidate in it at all.
The influential reporter submitted the manuscript of his research thesis on 22 November 2019, which was submitted to the BASR meeting held on 26 November 2019, for further perusal to referees. The members of the BASR raised serious concerns and the thesis was regretted for further pursual and was returned to the candidate. Later on 25th August, 2020, the case was resubmitted in BASR but more objections were raised and it was regretted again.
According to sources, the same thesis was submitted to the BASR for the third time on 16 March, 2021 to be forwarded to referees for the award of PhD degree. Shockingly, this time, the case was not made part of the regular agenda, which is supposed to be shared with members one week prior the BASR meeting, but was added later on as an additional agenda point during the meeting to avoid attention of the members.
As per rules, only BASR can give approval of a thesis manuscript for further pursual to referees, however this thesis was instead given approval by the Vice Chancellor himself on 27th November 2020 and the thesis was sent to referees who were not even on the list of referees approved for thesis review on 25th August 2020. This was again made possible with yet another special permission by none other than the worthy Vice Chancellor himself.
And so, the admin of KU now prepares to award PhD degree to a candidate after 24 years despite the fact that there are objections and questions at every stage of the admission and thesis process where as just a few months a PhD scholar of KU, Nadia Ashraf, committed suicide over not getting extension to complete her thesis.
