PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench on Friday stayed the appointment of assistant professor to the Physiology Department of the Khyber Teaching Hospital and sought comments of the provincial health secretary and other relevant officials on a petition filed by a candidate for the said post on the matter.

Justice Ikramullah Khan and Justice Ghazanf ar Ali fixed the next hearing for Feb 28 into the petition of Dr Anwar Khan Wazir, the vice-principal of Nowshera Medical College, directing the relevant authorities not to issue the appointment letter for the post until then.

The petitioner has challenged his disqualification by the selection committee for the said post claiming earlier he was twice declared eligible for the said post.

The respondents in the petition are the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government though health secretary, the medical director of Khyber Teaching Hospital and principal of the Khyber Medical College, Peshawar.

The petitioner`s counsel, Saleem Shah Hoti, said his client had done BDS and MPhil in physiotherapy.

He added that last year, the medical director of KTH had issued an advertisement calling for applications for different posts including that of assistant professor of physiology.

The lawyer claimed that his client had also applied for the said post but he was dropped out from the interview inorder to adjust a blue-eyed person of the hospital`s management.

He said previously, the petitioner had appeared twice in such interviews for the same post. He added that although the petitioner was not selected, he was eligible for the post.

`This time around, the petitioner has not been even allowed to appear in the interview, an act, which violates of Clause 26 of Pakistan Medical and Dental Council Regulations for appointments in medical colleges and hospitals,` he said.

The lawyer said the act of the respondents was in violation of Articles 4, 14, and 27 of the Constitution.

SALARY FROZEN: A high court bench consisting of Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth and Justice Lal Jan Khattak ordered the federal government to freeze the salary of the Trade Development Authority`s director general for continuously ignoring the court`s order about the filing of comments on a petition.

The petition is filed by Adnan Khan, who claimed that his father was a lowgrade employee in the TDA, who had died in 2001.

The petitioner said he had applied for job in TDA against the quota reserved for children of retired or deceased employees.

He claimed that the TDA management had not been giving him employment despite qualification.

The petitioner said during previous few hearings, the court had issued orders for the TDA`s DG to file comments on the matter but the orders had yet to be complied with.