The HEC has now sent the degrees to Karachi and Sindh universities for further verification. The HEC officials said all of the four lawmakers’ degrees carry fictitious stamps.
It also declared the degrees of 29 lawmakers fake. “We received 936 (scrutinized) degrees, out of which 511 degrees have been verified and 29 were found fake,” said Mahmood Raza, adviser to the HEC.
He, however, refused to divulge names. The commission will present its full report to the National Assembly’s standing committee on education on July 16.
Meanwhile, the University of the Punjab, which has received the majority of degrees, declared six more degrees bogus. Five of these degrees belong to Punjab Assembly members and one to a member of theKhyber-Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, said the university’s spokesman, Khawaja Tahir. The university has sought two more days to verify the remaining 89 degrees.
The University of Karachi has also sent 103 degrees to the HEC. University sources said that the degree of Faisal Raza Abidi, a PPP senator and political adviser to Zardari, was authentic but refused to comment on the degrees of Yaqoob Bizenjo and Jameel Malik whose cases are pending in court.
Higher Education Commission Chairman Javed Leghari may quit from his post due to mounting differences with the ruling PPP over the bogus degrees issue and also end his affiliation to the PPP.
Leghari was appointed by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani in August 2009. A former member of the PPP’s Central Executive Committee, he was also elected as a party senator from 2006 to 2009.
Officials said serious differences have surfaced between Leghari and the PPP over the verification of degrees, which was ordered by the Supreme Court. The HEC chairman is reportedly under tremendous pressure from the government over the manner in which the commission is carrying out its checks.
