LAHORE, Jan 19: A large number of students of the University of Education (UoE) on Wednesday staged a demonstration against the termination of varsity’s science and technology division director Prof Dr Anwaarul Rehman Pasha and his wife, Dr Shaheen Pasha.
The protesters turned violent as the police resorted to launching a baton charge on them for blocking College Road in Township. The police did not spare the media personnel, who were covering the demonstration, and deliberately beat them up too, leaving education reporters Zaheer Abbas and Rizwan Nazir injured.
The adamant police, in a hot pursuit, caught some students from Akbar Chowk, about a kilometre away from the UoE campus, and thrashed them for damaging public and private property there. However, all arrested students were released on the directives of Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, who pacified the protesting students by promising reinstatement of the teachers.
The protesters chanted slogans against the police as well as the UoE administration and vowed that they would continue their protest until both teachers were restored.
The Punjab Assembly Press Gallery members observed a token boycott against the police’s highhandedness against education reporters. The government, however, assured the journalists that the SP concerned would be summoned in the assembly chambers on Thursday (today) and would be asked to explain his conduct.Meanwhile, a twomember committee consisting of the law minister and the higher education secretary, or his nominee, has asked UoE acting vice-chancellor Prof Farhat Saleem and the two teachers sacked by the VC on Monday, to appear and explain their points of view.
When contacted, Prof Farhat Saleem said she was satisfied with her decision to sack the two faculty members. She said she would not revise her decision. She said Prof Pasha had been ousted from four institutions and the UoE was the fifth one from where he had been sacked. She said these two faculty members were sacked and could not be restored but reappointed.
“I will not reappoint them and won’t mind even if I am told to relinquish the acting charge,” she said.
Prof Saleem claimed that only those students, who were instigated by Prof Pasha and his wife, were protesting and not even a single faculty member protested in favour of the sacked couple.
She said all examinations except that of information technology papers held peacefully. Owing to students’ protests, she said, the IT papers’ date-sheet had been revised and the examination would now begin from Jan 24 (Monday).
