The National Accountability Bureau has reportedly summoned the former Vice Chancellor Dr. Zafar Iqbal of the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology in a case related to misappropriation of funds. The funds that have allegedly been misappropriated amount to around 20 million rupees along with Rs. 170,400 that have been charged from the prospective students.
Dr. Zafar has been accused of opening a sub-campus of the varsity in Lahore in violation of the applicable rules and procedures. The rules and procedures prescribed some conditions before the opening of any such campus, which entailed approval from the Higher Education Commission and approval of the Syndicate and Senate of the Varsity. As declared by the Lahore High Court in its judgment dated 13 July 2015, the steps carried out by the former VC were in blatant disregard of the law and procedure as they ignored both of the conditions above. Furthermore, the ex-VC was also castigated in the inquiry report of the committee headed by the Secretary Education in which Dr. Zafar Iqbal was found to have misused his authority for his own vested interests.
NAB has let this matter linger on for a prolonged period as this scandal first erupted in the year 2014 when the Senate of FUUAST adopted a resolution condemning actions of the Vice Chancellor. Afterwards, a Review Panel was formed under the Chairmanship of Justice Retd. Haziq-ul-Khairi. As ordered by the Lahore High Court in its judgment, the file was put before the Chancellor i.e. President of Pakistan. The former VC was removed from his post in August 2015 and The President of Pakistan forwarded the multiple complaints received against Dr. Zafar Iqbal to NAB in December 2015. However, it has been almost been an year since this case was brought to NAB’s notice and it had yet to take any significant step in the inquiry/ investigation. In this regard, the news of the former VC being called in for questioning is a welcome development.
The background of this is that on the 11th of January 2016, the Executive Board Meeting chaired by the Chairman NAB Qamar Zaman Chaudhry authorized an inquiry against Dr Zafar, which has is now going to be pursued by the Bureau’s Lahore Office. The Bureau’s Lahore Office was recently extolled by the DG NAB Lahore for its managing of a whole plethora of cases in the last two years. A conviction rate of 53 percent was achieved in 2015 while a conviction rate of 94 percent was achieved in the year 2016. However, the figures in terms of volume paint a slightly problematic picture.
A total of 12,835 complaints were received by the NAB Lahore whereof a total of 864 were authorized for verification. This potentially indicates that NAB Lahore has been over-stretched in terms of work due to which it has not been able to verify all of the complaints received, even though it claims to have disposed of 12,308 of those complaints. Previously, NAB officials have expressed concerns on numerous occasions that it is over-burdened in terms of work. In a meeting held in May 2016 of a Senate Committee to discuss the overlapping of powers between NAB and the Federal Investigation Agency, NAB’s Director General Operations had apprised the members of the committee that around 600 officials of NAB had handled around 30,000 cases. This is a voluminous figure.
Corruption is endemic to the society for which convictions act as a solid deterrence. Given the figure put forth by the NAB DG Operations, it is an extremely uphill task for the NAB officials to collect evidence against accused persons that manages to get them convicted. For this purpose, the expansion of NAB’s task force is vital. The DG NAB Operations had also intimated the committee how its conviction rate had dropped due to the over-burdening of the NAB officials.
In this context, the progress of Dr. Zafar Iqbal case’s front is a welcome development and NAB deserves to be, if not congratulated, then at least given the proverbial “better late than never” pat on the back. However, it remains to be seen as to whether NAB will manage to collect enough evidence for the alleged wrongs committed by Dr. Zafar Iqbal.