By Khawar Ghumman

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly Standing Committee on Education on Tuesday (today) will meet Higher Education Commission (HEC) officials to work out a strategy through which academic credentials of parliamentarians can be verified, reliable sources told Dawn.

The chairman of the committee, Chaudhry Abid Sher Ali will preside over the meeting scheduled to be held at the HEC head office here.

Following a spate of fake degree scandals involving parliamentarians, Mr Sher Ali has called for checking degrees of all sitting parliamentarians. Though Supreme Court has struck down the condition of graduation imposed by former President Pervez Musharraf for contesting election to National Assembly, Senate and provincial assemblies, the clause was in place at the time of the 2008 general elections.

Quoting intelligence sources, the then secretary Election Commission Kanwar Dilshad has recently said that near 150 legislators held dubious degrees. Fearing conviction in the recent months, a number of sitting members of both the national and provincial assemblies, whose degrees had been challenged in the court, resigned from their seats.

When asked, HEC officials said they had no objection in verifying degrees of MNAs and senators provided a formal request was made either through the Election Commission or by the speaker National Assembly and the chairman Senate.

“At its own, the HEC has no right to check or verify even the academic credentials of a student until we are approached either by the student concerned or some other legal channel for example any government agency,” a senior official of the HEC said.

When asked about HEC’s procedures to verify authenticity of a degree, the official said there were a number of ways through which they could determine whether a certificate was genuine.

For example, provision of all academic certificates from matric onward is a must to apply for BA, MA or PhD degrees verification.

Secondly, the HEC is keeping a whole lot of data about all universities whereby it could check veracity of a degree.

In case of doubt, the Higher Education Commission can directly call the relevant university, the official added, saying: “in the present age of information technology it is not a big deal to check the authenticity of a degree issued anywhere in the world.”
Source: Dawn
Date:5/26/2010