So far, the HEC has furnished the data of around 421 public representatives (in the National Assembly, the Senate and the four provincial assemblies) after verifying their educational degrees, declaring 372 as valid, 30 as fake and another 19 as invalid.
An analysis of the lists HEC has compiled shows that in the 168-member Sindh Assembly the degrees of 111 members have been verified, of them 110 have been declared valid while one has been found invalid.
This represents the highest number of verified, valid degrees from amongst the provincial legislatures of the country. Nawabzada Mir Nadir Magsi from the PS-40 constituency is the only Sindh Assembly member whose degree was declared invalid. Magsi, who submitted a BSc agriculture degree at the time of the 2008 poll, claims he obtained it from Strassford University in the UK. Magsi has been called in by the Election Commission on September 16 to explain his position.
Degrees of 100 National Assembly members, 39 senators, 66 Punjab, 17 Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and 39 Balochistan Assembly members have been declared as valid. The Punjab Assembly is a 371-member house, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Assembly has a total strength of 124 while the Balochistan Assembly has a total strength of 65.
The National Assembly consists of 342 members while the Senate is a 100-member house. Of the members whose degrees have been declared fake or invalid, 16 belong to Punjab, 13 are from the National Assembly, six each from the Senate and Balochistan and seven belong to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Assembly.
The degrees of two federal cabinet members have been declared invalid. Mir Humayun Aziz Kurd, the minister for livestock, was elected from NA-267 Balochistan as federal lawmaker, while Mir Israrullah Khan Zehri was elected as a senator from Balochistan. Both of them had submitted foreign degrees. Kurd claims to have obtained a BBA marketing degree from Eire International University while Zehri submitted a degree he claims to have obtained from International University of America, London.
Zehri is adamant that he will not appear before the Election Commission and remained absent when asked to present his case in the commission despite being called three times. Under the procedure laid down by the ECP all members whose degrees have been declared fake or invalid will be given a chance to clarify their position before their cases are sent to the courts for criminal proceedings.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 11th, 2010.
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