ISLAMABAD – The Higher Education Commission, which is going to be dissolved in the name of the implementation of the 18th Amendment apparently for its bold stance on the verification of parliamentarians’ degrees, has once again sought help from the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to get educational documents of 254 parliamentarians for verification.
HEC Accreditation and Attestation Director General Rahim Bux Channa told Pakistan Today that degrees of 254 lawmakers had not been verified so far because supporting documents such as matriculation and intermediate certificates had not been provided to the HEC. He said that the HEC had written to the ECP recently to get the documents.
He said further that the HEC had urged the ECP in its letters to play its role in the degree verification process, which had been started on orders from the Supreme Court. A source within the HEC told Pakistan Today that the ECP had not been cooperating in this regard and around 5 letters had been written to the ECP, but to no avail.
An ECP official, who wished to remain unnamed, told Pakistan Today that the commission was following the government’s instructions because the top brass of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party had told the ECP to delay the process as long as possible. He also said that no action had yet been taken against the former postal services minister Mir Israrullah Khan Zehri by the ECP.
The ECP’s Hearing Committee had served Zehri a number of notices in this regard and also given a final one three months back but he never turned up, the source said. “Now the ECP has started another strategy to delay the process and each time postpone the issue for a long while whenever a lawmaker contacts the ECP to buy time to submit his or her supporting documents,” he added.
