Passing the buck: A real spat over fake degrees

HEC, ECP fail to decide the fate of 183 former parliamentarians whose degrees have yet to be verified.

ISLAMABAD:

Despite clear directions from a parliamentary panel and the Supreme Court, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) still can’t seem to decide the fate of 183 former parliamentarians whose degrees have yet to be verified.

The matter was first referred to the ECP and HEC in 2010, but the HEC holds the ECP responsible for the delay, saying it has been ‘lingering on the issue of degree verification of the parliamentarians for two years.’ The HEC defended itself in a reply submitted to the apex court, saying it has been asking the ECP since 2010 for copies of the Matriculation and Intermediate certificates of said candidates. Without these, the HEC says it cannot complete the verification process.

But Afzal Khan, the ECP’s additional secretary claimed they had submitted all the degrees which have been submitted by the parliamentarians. “Why can’t the HEC verify these degrees from relevant institutions?” he asked. In response, HEC spokesman Murtaza Noor said the HEC had to follow its Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for degree verification. As per those SOPs, they required original certificates/degrees/sanads from Matriculation onwards along with transcripts of degrees.



He claimed the HEC has verified over one million degrees in the last 10 years. “About 600 to 1,000 degrees are verified on a daily basis at the HEC.” said Noor.

He also said that 750 parliamentarians had got their degrees verified as genuine, while 54 had been declared fake and 249 are yet to be verified. Besides these, the cases of 19 legislators are under litigation.

This isn’t the only disagreement between these two bodies. The HEC’s reply also targeted an ECP press release from 27th February in which the ECP declared 27 fake degrees dated as being acceptable. In a response sent to the ECP on the 4th of March, the HEC said it disagreed with this position. The HEC says that it has not cleared any fake degrees as yet and, to date, considers 54 degrees of parliamentarians to be fake.

After the ECP press release, the HEC chairman wrote to the chief election commissioner to correct their numbers and requested further directions from the ECP and SC on the status of unverified degrees and of those currently under litigation. The HEC in its reply once again complained that the ECP is asking for verification without providing the required documents.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 2^nd, 2013.