What do we do with fake degree holders?

The Higher Education Commissioner (HEC) on Thursday told the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) that 189 degrees of parliamentarians were yet to be verified as they had failed to provide their certificates to the ECP and HEC.

In a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Fakhruddin Ibrahim, HEC Chairman Javaid Laghari pointed out that the former parliamentarians had failed to submit the certificates despite clear instructions that failure to have their degrees verified within 15 days would result in them being declared fake and criminal proceedings would be initiated against them.

Moreover, the letter said that cases of 19 parliamentarians were currently under litigation in various courts for verification of their degrees. The HEC chairman said the commission was ready to provide the status of degrees of these parliamentarians to the courts.

The HEC sought further orders from the ECP and Supreme Court (SC) for the status of unverified degrees (189 in total) and of those under litigation (19).

Furthermore, the letter stated that ECP could not declare degrees as fake on its own. The HEC letter said that the current number of fake degree cases with HEC was 54.