Thursday, November 25, 2010

Degree verification saga


PU fails to verify degree of PM's son


By Khalid Khattak

LAHORE: Punjab University (PU) has failed to decide fate of graduation degree of MPA Abdul Qadir Gilani, son of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, which has been under scrutiny for almost two months now.

The issue was highlighted in early October this year but since then nothing has been heard clarifying the exact situation whether the premier’s son holds a genuine degree or a fake one.

Besides this, it is reliably learnt verification of degrees of almost a dozen of MPs are pending with the Punjab University. According to sources a couple of weeks ago the Higher Education Commission (HEC) had written a letter to the PU asking the varsity to speed up the whole process of verification but to no avail.

It was reported that Abdul Qadir Gilani’s case was amongst those some students who had taken their BA/BSc exam in an examination hall that was never allotted to them.

It was further reported that such cases are dealt by the Unfair Means Committee of the university but the junior Gilani never appeared before the committee despite issuance of three notices. It is pertinent to mention here that Abdul Qadir Gilani, however, denies to have done anything wrong.

According to the sources besides degree of premier’s son, the Punjab University had yet to verify degrees of around a dozen of senior parliamentarians who had graduated from the varsity many years back. They also claimed that the varsity high ups were under tremendous pressure owing to which the whole process had to face delay.

They further said the verification of junior Gilani’s degree had been pending before October when the issue was highlighted for the first time by the media.

PU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Mujahid Kamran could not be reached by The News despite repeated attempts on his cell phone while an SMS was also sent to him in this connection by this correspondent.

However when contacted a senior PU official, seeking anonymity, said the varsity’s verification committee would meet within this week and all the cases would be taken up.

He said the delay was witnessed owing to delay in provision of required documents by the MPs adding Eid holidays and non availability of some members of the committee were other contributing factors.

The PU official denied any pressure saying it was a sensitive issue and needed to be dealt with care keeping in view all the legality. To a question he said the PU would be able to verify all the remaining degrees of MPs by December 2010.

HEC Chairman Dr Javaid R Laghari, when contacted, confirmed that the Commission had written a letter to the Punjab University. He, however, expressed helplessness to share response of the university saying he was himself out of the country and had recently returned back.

(The story appeared in The News International on Wednesday Nov 24, 2010. However it was missing in the online edition of the newspaper!)

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