Pakistan People's Party took to task Chairman of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Education Abid Sher Ali for raising the most-debated issue of fake degrees of Parliamentarians in the committee meeting. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education met here on Thursday with Abid Sher Ali of PML-N - a hard-liner on the fake degree issue - in the chair.
The meeting witnessed uproar when PPP MNAs including Azra Fazal and former Justice Fakharun Nisa Khokhar raised hue and cry over raising the issue of fake degrees and criticised Abid Sher Ali, for politicising the issue by including it in the committee agenda items.
Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho came down hard on Abid Sher Ali for taking up the issue of fake degrees, saying that the issue has been included in the agenda item without taking into confidence the committee members. The committee has no mandate to discuss the issue and it is business of Election Commission of Pakistan to deal with such matters, she added. She said that this is not the platform to check the morality of the parliamentarians. Why the parliamentarians are always made scapegoats?" she questioned.
Shouting at the chairman she said "you dragged the issue of Farah Dogar for one and a half year and would pass the rest of the time while dragging fake degrees issue. This is not the way to run the committee". While trying to calm her down, Abid Sher Ali said that all the members were informed prior to the inclusion of the issue in the agenda item and the matter of degrees' verification was highlighted after taking into confidence the members.
Former Justice Fakhar-un-Nisa Khokhar also raised objections on highlighting the fake degrees' issue by the committee. Secretary Election Commission, Ishtiaq Ahmad Khan, informed that the degrees which the Higher Education Commission had sent back to the ECP were irrelevant documents and illegible, out of them 143 degrees have been sent to the HEC again for verification. He said that the ECP is still waiting for 25 degrees, as Returning Officers have not provided the degrees to the commission so far.
He said the Supreme Court had directed the ECP to take action against the fake degree holders and nominate a person to supervise the matter. He told the committee members that there are legal and constitutional complications attached to the matter so the ECP is formulating guidelines to implement the decision of the apex court.
The former Secretary of ECP, Kanwar Dilshad, said it was the duty of the Returning Officers who are the representatives of judiciary and under the act of the ECP had full power, who have to scrutinise the documents within three to four days. The committee members urged that the Returning Officers who were involved in letting the candidates to contest elections on forged documents should also be held accountable and their names should also be highlighted.
HEC Chairman Dr Javaid R Laghari, while giving updates about the on-going verification process of degrees said so far the HEC has received 62 degrees from six universities, which are yet to be verified. The officials of the commission informed that a three-member committee has been formed, which would tally the degrees received from universities with its record and by July 16 all the degrees would be handed over to the standing committee after verification.
The chairman expressed his displeasure over the failure of the National University of Modern Languages (NUML) administration for not notifying that the Chancellor of the university, the President of Pakistan, should preside over the BoG meetings instead of Chief of Army Staff. The Rector of NUML Brigadier Aziz Ahmad Khan (Retd) informed that the university has written a letter to GHQ in this regard. But the chairman pointed out that the university should have written to the Ministry of Education and to the President not to the GHQ.
It is important to mention that the committee had directed the Rector in its last meeting to ensure the implementation of the ordinance in letter and spirit and ensure that the Chief of Army Staff should not hold the office of Chairman of Board of Governors and according to the ordinance of the university the Chancellor of the university, the President of Pakistan, should preside over the BoG meetings.
The environment become more tense when the rector was bombarded with questions by the committee members over misappropriations, illegal award of scholarships to rector's daughter and son-in-law, irregular appointments, nepotism and prolonged tenure of the rector himself at the campus. The rector threatened to walkout from the meeting. He said the committee is victimising him because he was a retired army officer.
Taking notice of hundreds of excess appointments and irregularities in the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) the committee members unanimously stated the matter should be sent to the Public Accounts Committee and Auditor General of Pakistan to ascertain who were responsible in this regard. They said the appointments that have been made should be cancelled and the posts should be re-advertised.