FJMC gets its affiliation restored with PU

LAHORE, A special division bench of the Lahore High Court on Tuesday set aside Punjab government ‘s notification regarding affiliation of Fatima Jinnah Medical College (FJMC) with University of Health Science (UHS) and gave it back to Punjab University.

The bench of Khawaja Muhammad Sharif and Justice Ijaz-ul-Ahsan passed these orders on Tuesday restoring old affiliation of FJMC with PU as desired by its local and international students.

The female students of FJMC celebrated the order and congratulated each other on the court premises besides thanking their lawyer Noshad A Khan advocate.

Earlier, during proceedings the students’ counsel argued that FJMC being a gender specific institution enjoyed trust of thousands of students of Islamic countries including Iran and Saudi Arabia and by trying to affiliate it with UHS the government was destroying the image of the institution.

He submitted that UHS, except degree awarding status, had no infrastructure such as professors and teaching faculty or other essential facilities for the students who being in mid career of their studies were much perturbed by the government’s decision.

He said FJMC being named after the Mother of Country, should have been made medical university like King Edward Medial College but instead it was handed over to a new born university which was a cause of concern for all students.

Deputy Advocate General Hanif Khatana told the court that government had to make decision seeing that private medical collages were refusing affiliation with UHS giving precedent of FJMC.

About making FJMC a university, the law officer said the government had a plan to elevate it to the level of university but for that purpose the required funds were not available so it was affiliated with UHS for the time being.