KC gives admissions to 3rd divisioners

Kinnaird College for Women has blatantly violated its admission policy of granting admissions to students in Intermediate since even the third divisioners have ‘found their way’ to the premier institute in gross violation of the approved policy of the College, the Higher Education Commission, and the Punjab government.
Secondly, sources have also confided that while granting admissions against special categories – mainly sports, minorities, O-Level, kinship – merit was again violated ‘for reasons better known to certain players’. As per the documents, even after the closing date, the admissions were made. Despite this, the College also failed in filling 1400 allocated seats falling short by 430 students, which raises questions about level of interest of the College administration. Also, so far only 826 students have been registered with the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education Lahore.
The admissions policy 2010 of the College clearly states that the principles include merit – all students must meet admission criteria – fairness and consistency across all the programmes. This policy was based on observations of an inquiry tribunal constituted by Punjab government, headed by AZK Sherdil and later a Fact-Finding Committee of KC’s Board of Governors on admissions of 2009, and the BoG gave its approval on May 10, 2010. However, quite a large number of admissions made this year are in total violation of the approved policy of the College and the Higher Education Commission.
According to the College Admission Policy 2010, the minimum eligibility criterion for reserved seats against special categories was set at 5 per cent lower than the required minimum for open merit seats. For pre-medical and pre-engineering, 892 marks on open merit, while 840 marks were fixed for reserved seats. For ICS Physics and Stats, FA General Science and Humanities, and ICOM, the bar was 787 marks and 735 marks respectively for open and categories merit.
The slight reduction of marks for reserved seats is allowed to facilitate falling in categories of minorities, sports and disabled. However, in spite of offering some reserved seats with lowered criterion, the College, amongst other violations, admitted students with up to 300 marks lower than the minimum level. The documents show that approximately 100 students, falling below the minimum criterion, have been given admission. A few glaring examples are: Fizza Chaudhary 499 marks, Maliha Ikram 544, Faryal Tansir 639, Qurat-ul-ain 607, Anum Pervaiz 545, Aleena Tariq 603, Hira Athar 525, Iram Nawaz 452, Maham Liaqat 505, Maryam Khokhar 566, Jennifer Joseph 543, Rehan Aslam 419, Rubab Naeem 491 and Sadia Lal with 519 marks.
For pre-Medical seats, among other students with lower grades, Gurdeep Kaur with 743 marks and Dina Shafqat with 783 marks also got admission.
On the other hand, irregularities in merit lists and allocation of shifts and majors were also detected. As per the first merit list (Minorities), Anum Nadeem, Hina Gulab and Mahum Sikandar with 611, 655 and 605 marks respectively given admission in ICS Stats but were shifted to Morning classes, obviously having higher merit. Other examples are of Jennifer Joseph 543, Jassmine John 574, and Persicla Kanwal Younis 612 of FA Humanities, who were also shifted to Morning classes.
Interestingly, students enumerated in the second merit list have higher marks than the first list. Ayesha Sabir and Sabab James with 653 and 676 marks respectively fall in this category.
Moreover, there are cases of illegal registering of students with the BISE, whose names were not mentioned in merit the lists. These include: Uraisha Khan 636 marks, Iram Nawaz 452, Maryam Khokhar 566, Rehan Aslam 419 marks, Sehrish George 500, Sehar Ilyas 478 and Shashai Naeem 690 marks.
Principal KC Dr. Rukhsana David doubted the facts, and asserted that there were categories for which the merit was lowered since other factors were also considered. However, while asserting that she needed to see documents, she did not come up clearly with any statement when she was quizzed whether the admission policy was violated or not.