ISLAMABAD: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) is all set to decide the fate of its executive director Dr Arshad Ali today (Friday) who has been alleged for stealing 88 percent of research work in his papers. An official in the HEC privy to the matter said that the decision was taken by the senior management and it would be decided after discussion in the 18-member commission meeting which is the actual authority to take some certain sort of decision in such high profile cases. The commission board meeting is scheduled to be held today at the HEC secretariat. As per HEC Act 2002, the executive director is the second most important post of the commission being the principal accounting officer of the body that manages around Rs 100 billion annual budget. He/she acts as head of HEC secretariat and also as the secretary of the commission’s governing body which makes policies on improving quality of education and fighting plagiarism. Surprisingly, HEC Executive Director Dr Arshad Ali in December last year, was allegedly found involved in stealing 88 percent research work of his co-authored research paper from another publication. The paper titled A Taxonomy & Survey of Grid Resource Planning & Reservation Systems for Grid Enabled Analysis Environment published in July 2004, was found with heavy plagiarism when it had been tested in Turnitin, a software which has been officially provided by HEC to universities to check the similarity index and plagiarism in the degrees as well as research papers of the scholars. According to the Turnitin report, the accused copied most parts in his paper from a paper titled Survey & Taxonomy of Grid Resource Management Systems authored by Chaitanya Kandagatla of University of Texas in February 2004. Interestingly, the HEC in an official statement claimed that the commission will discuss and finalise high profile plagiarism cases apart from some other agenda items including pending policy issues, financial problems facing universities and identify ways of moving forward in the meeting. However, the HEC did not mention the name of accused principle accounting officer in the statement. While defending the point, HEC Spokesperson Aayesha Ikram said that to especially put the name of Dr Arshad Ali in the released statement was entirely unnecessary. To reply a question, she confirmed that the case regarding allegations for plagiarism against executive director is also part of the commission meeting agenda, adding that he will leave the meeting room when the commission will start review his case. On the other hand, the HEC clearly mentioned in the statement that the scheduled meeting will be attended by Dr Arshad Ali as well including other members of the commission. A senior official wishing anonymity wondered that the person who himself accused for plagiarism charges will review the ‘high profile’ plagiarism cases. Moreover, he said, it’s also regretting that the accused will evaluate his guiltiness himself. Apart from HEC Chairman Dr Tariq Banuri and Dr Arshad Ali, the meeting would be attended commission members Shahnaz Wazir Ali, Dr Faisal Bari, Engineer Farooq Bazai, Dr Bhawani Shankar Chaudhary, Jamshoro, Dr Naveed A Malik, Dr Sania Nishtar, Dr Javed Iqbal, Asif Mumtaz Sukhera and some other officials from federal and provincial governments. This would be first meeting of this newly formulated commission approved few months ago from former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi. The commission is a high powered body of HEC remained incomplete for over two years and several significant decisions had been taken in the HEC without consent of the commission which as per HEC act was not lawful. Apart from some plagiarism cases under investigation by the HEC committee, currently around 30 scholars are blacklisted and the commission also put the information on its official website. As per HEC policy, if most of the papers have been exactly copied from any published work of other people without giving the reference to the original work, a major penalty of dismissal from service could be imposed. The policy also mentions that such a plagiarist may be black listed and may not be eligible for employment in any academic/research organisation and the notification of black listing of the author may be published in print media or publicised on different websites at the discretion of the vice chancellor/rector/head of the organisation. The HEC Plagiarism Policy also mentions, “Any person listing his CV on the website or any current publication or applying for any benefit on the basis of published or presented work that is plagiarised will be liable to be punished as per prescribed rules.” Published in Daily Times, October 19th 2018.