The chief minister will succeed the governor as KP universities’ chancellor.

The chief minister will succeed the governor as KP universities’ chancellor.

The institutions Amendment Bill 2024, which the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government has submitted, calls for significant changes to the way the province’s institutions are run.

The position of university chancellor will move from the governor to the chief minister under the proposed legislation that Provincial Law Minister Aftab Alam presented to the KP Assembly. Furthermore, the chief minister would have the power to choose vice-chancellors (VCs).

  • Important Aspects of the Bill: The chief minister would choose VCs from a pool of three applicants that the Academic Search Committee has suggested.
  • Tenure and Performance: Venture capitalists will have a four-year term, followed by a two-year midterm performance assessment. Their employment may be terminated if their performance rating drops below 65%.
  • The bill suggests a new process for selecting registrars, enabling the chancellor to select a registrar from among the administrative executives of the institution.

Speaker Babar Saleem Swati presided over a meeting where Minister Aftab Alam also discussed the recent violence in the Kurram district and blamed it on the dissemination of false information on social media. He told the House that steps were being made to disarm individuals involved and that “we visited Kurram immediately after the clashes.” The chief minister has given a peace jirga the authority to mediate, and an operation to seize firearms will shortly begin.

Jalal Khan, a PML-N MLA and opposition member, denounced the leadership for the disturbances and called for negotiation over the problem in response to the political violence at D-Chowk. He held protest leaders responsible for the deaths by demanding that they “stop playing with the lives of innocent people.”

Opposition member Nisar Baz’s quorum challenge brought the session to a close, and it was adjourned till December 3 at 2:00 PM.