Opinion | A University That Thinks It Is Above Its Own Act

By Editorial Creator, CitiTimes

Panjab University, Chandigarh, prides itself on academic rigour and institutional tradition. Yet on a crucial matter of law and governance, it appears to be doing the opposite — bending rules, stretching statutes, and normalising illegality in the name of administrative convenience.

• The controversy over who qualifies as a Registered Graduate is not a dry legal quibble. It is a test of whether the University respects the very law that created it.

The Panjab University Act, 1947, is crystal clear. Section 14(4) grants automatic entry into the Register of Graduates only to those who graduated from the University of the Panjab, Lahore, before 1948. This was a narrow, transitional protection for alumni displaced by Partition — not a blank cheque for future generations of Lahore graduates.

Yet, in practice, the University has behaved as though this boundary does not exist.

Through an expansive reading of Section 5 of the Panjab University Calendar, the administration has effectively erased Parliament’s 1948 cut-off. Any Lahore graduate who merely satisfies the five-year rule has been treated as eligible — as if the University can casually rewrite history and law at will.

This is not an interpretation. It is institutional overreach.

Universities often lecture society about constitutionalism and the rule of law. But Panjab University has set a dangerous precedent: when the statute is inconvenient, ignore it; when the Calendar is flexible, stretch it.

That is unacceptable.

The legal position is beyond dispute. The Act is supreme. The Calendar is subordinate. A university cannot use its internal rules to expand rights that Parliament deliberately limited. Any such attempt is ultra vires—beyond its powers —and would likely collapse under judicial scrutiny.

What makes this worse is the democratic implication. The Register of Graduates feeds directly into university elections and governance structures. If eligibility itself is legally shaky, then the legitimacy of representation is compromised. In effect, the University risks building elections on a legally defective foundation.

Some fans of Panjab University, particularly alumni from the Chandigarh community, claim that a broader interpretation is more inclusive. That is a convenient “fig leaf”. Inclusivity that violates the law is not progress; it is simply illegal behavior disguised as reform. If they are fond of Lahore, Pakistan, and believe the 1948 boundary is outdated, the correct approach is to amend the Act through the legislature, not to undermine it with administrative tricks.

Panjab University must stop pretending that it can operate above its own statute. Institutions gain authority not by bending rules, but by respecting them — especially when inconvenient.

The choice is stark:
Align with the Act, or continue courting legal chaos.

Until the University corrects course, its Graduate Register will remain tainted by a self-inflicted credibility crisis — and deservedly so.

---

“When a university ignores its own statute, it loses the moral right to lecture anyone on the rule of law.”

---