ECP ready to click and check fake degrees
ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has prepared an archive on its computers of the educational degrees and other papers filed by all the 1,170 members of the Senate, National Assembly and provincial assemblies to quickly ascertain the veracity of any document with just one click.
The exercise, completed on Friday, was undertaken amid the rising storm over the bogus educational degrees of the MPs and in the wake of the June 14 judgment of the Supreme Court in the Rizwan Gill case.
Whatever documents a contesting candidate submitted with his or her nomination papers with the returning officer before the general elections or by-polls would now be readily available on computers, ECP spokesman Afzal Khan told The News.
Indeed, he said, it was an uphill task to manually go through the files to trace a single document pertaining to any federal or provincial legislator. Now, it has been made easy to access any document submitted by any contestant.
Afzal Khan said scanned copies of all the documents attached with the candidacy papers had been stored in the archive, a task that was concluded after extensive work spanning several days.
He said there was a confused picture about the number of allegedly fake degrees as some reports emanating from the Higher Education Commission (HEC) stated that they were thirty-seven while others put it at sixty-one.
The spokesman said that during his recent meeting with senior HEC officials in which he requested appointment of a focal person to communicate with for quick disposal of degree related queries, he also gave his email address for fast correspondence.
This was done to avoid the involvement of sending of letters by the ECP or the HEC to each other through dispatch riders so that no delays might be caused, Afzal Khan said adding that at the ECP’s end, there would be no slowdown of any sort.
Another ECP official said that the ECP was calling professional law officers from its other stations for assistance in legal matters relating to the verification of allegedly counterfeit degrees of the MPs.
He said that the ECP had no powers to unseat an MP right away and had to follow a set constitutional and legal procedure specified for the purpose. “When a court of law disqualifies an MP, he instantly stands ousted as per its order and the ECP has nothing to do with such cases,” the official said.
In many of such cases, he said, the concerned court also directs the ECP to hold by-elections within a certain timeframe for the seat that falls vacant because of unseating of an MP. Meanwhile, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Justice (R) Hamid Ali Mirza has issued comprehensive guidelines pertaining to dealing with the fake degree cases, to Afzal Khan, who has been nominated as the designated person as per the apex court ruling that has made it mandatory for the ECP to stringently proceed against the alleged cheats. The ECP will refer their cases to the Sessions judges for trial that may lead to three-year sentence.The news
