ISLAMABAD The leader of opposition in the previous National Assembly, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, has filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking “appropriate action” against the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Chairman, Dr Javaid Laghari, for allegedly disobeying the court’s verdict and launching a campaign against him.

In the petition moved under article 187 of the constitution and a copy of which is available with Dawn, the PML-N leader has requested the SC to summon the HEC chairman “to explain why he acted in disobedience” to the court’s order “by taking no steps for the verification of certificates and degrees and for sweeping the matter under the carpet with patent mala fides and ulterior motives.”

Chaudhry Nisar, whose name was on the initial HEC list of 189 parliamentarians possessing unverified degrees, has alleged that Dr Laghari had done all this “at the behest of President Asif Ali Zardari and none else”.

“The chairman HEC allowed himself to be misused for causing public disrespect and humiliation to the applicant,” says the petition.

The PML-N leader has stated that despite receiving the directly verified testimonials from the Cambridge University, the HEC declined to issue any clearance certificate “as mandatory required by the order of the SC dated 01-04-2013”.

The petition says: “There was no justification whatsoever to decline to issue clearance certificate after receipt of verification from Cambridge University, for which the applicant seeks the kind indulgence of this august court for taking notice and visiting responsible person(s) with appropriate penalties provided by the law.”

He says that in the light of the SC’s verdict in the fake degree case some three years back, it was the responsibility of the HEC to verify the genuineness or otherwise of the degrees and certificates of all the parliamentarians.

“While the applicant records his highest appreciation [for] the principled order of this august court discouraging any duplicity … on the part of parliamentarians, it is also of the utmost importance that the right to reputation of each citizen, including that of a repeatedly-elected parliamentarian, is given due acknowledgment and respect, guaranteed by article 4 by repositories of state power including chairman of HEC, whose duty it was to obtain through his own channels, verification of degree/certificate and testimonials by the issuing institutions and such verification had to be done without intervention of the candidates, so as to keep the process un-manoeuvred and unpolluted by interested individuals/candidates,” says the petition.