Proposal to Name Varsity after Quaid Rejected
Lahore : August 30: THE Punjab Assembly passed the Muhammad Nawaz Sharif Agriculture University Multan Bill on Thursday while the opposition parties walked out, showing strong resistance to naming the university after a political leader instead of some non-controversial national leader like Quaid-e-Azam.
The Treasury benches demolished all the amendments, proposed by the Opposition benches, including that which called for changing the name of the university to Quaid-e-Azam Agricultural University Multan. Opposition members, led by Jamaat-e-Islami parliamentary leader Dr Waseem Akhtar and PTI leader Dr Murad Ross, walked out at the time of voting when the Speaker did not allow them to speak on the amendment, calling for naming the university after Quaid-e-Azam.
The Opposition members demanded that if Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif wanted a university named after him, he should have established it from his own pocket instead of the public money. They asked how a political leader could name a university built from taxpayers’ money after his own name.
PTI leader Dr Murad Ross said it was time we, as a nation, should do away with the ugly tradition of promoting our own names at the expense of taxpayers’ money. He said such a practice had been dividing the nation on political lines. He said Nawaz Sharif should have set up a university from his own pocket if he badly wanted to have it named after him.
He also questioned empowering the chancellor of the university with unquestionable powers of overruling and overriding the decisions of the syndicate and said what was the use of having noted people from important departments in the syndicate if the chancellor could overthrow their decisions on his whims and wishes.
Dr Waseem Akhtar demanded that the elected leaders of student unions should be included in the syndicate to ensure academic peace and solving their problems.
However, Law Minister Rana Sanaullah rejected the Opposition’s demands of changing the name of the university, saying he knew there were many public institutions named after political leaders sitting in the government and were alive. He warned the Opposition members not to insist on their point for if he began counting those names, the debate would get too far to be wound up in time. PTI’s Saadia Suhail said the university should have been named after any non-controversial unanimous leader who had passed away. Upon the uproar from the women on Treasury benches, she interjected with the prayer that Allah might give a long life to Nawaz Sharif, saying that it would have been proper if the university would have been named after some great Sufi saint from Multan. She said political governments had been changing the political names of public institutions and it was feared that any future government would change this name.
When Treasury benches women hooted against her questioning the name of Shaukat Khanum Hospital, Saadia replied that the hospital was not named after Imran Khan and the person whose name it was carrying had already been dead when it was built.
JI’s Dr Waseem Akhtar walked out twice during the proceedings. First he walked out alone when Law Minister Rana Sana ruled out incorporating student unions’ heads into the syndicate on the plea that the syndicate was authorised to do that on its own. He walked out again with all the Opposition members during the second reading of the bill after the Speaker treated the amendment to change the name of the university after Quaid-e-Azam as rejected since it was identical to those already voted out by the House.
Opposition’s Sibtain Khan, Arif Abbasi, Taimoor Malik and others also participated in the debate. The session was adjourned for Friday (today). The news.
