LAHORE, Aug 15: A full bench of the Lahore High Court on Monday ruled that an equivalence certificate, issued by a competent authority, was necessarily required to hold the ‘sanad’ of a religious seminary on a par with the matriculation certificate of a board of intermediate and secondary education as the minimum qualification for a candidate to contest for the office of nazim or naib nazim of a union council.

Comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Justice Sardar Mohammad Raza and Justice Sayeed Ashhad, the apex court referred to the decision of the Inter-Board Committee of Chairmen (IBCC) at a meeting held on July 21 that the Shadatus Sanvia certificate of a seminary was equivalent to a matriculation certificate of an educational board provided the candidate passed three compulsory subjects — English, Urdu and Pakistan Studies — and held that in the absence of such an equivalence certificate, a ‘sanad’ could not be rated on a par with a recognized matriculation certificate.

On a court question, additional advocate-general Mohammad Hanif Khatana submitted that the IBCC also decided in the same meeting that the ‘sanad’ of Shadatus Sanvia Khasa obtained from a recognized religious institution was equivalent to the higher secondary school certificate (Intermediate) if an additional examination in English and Urdu was also passed from an educational board.

Mr Khatana also submitted a list of religious institutions which were recognized by the Higher Education Commission as ‘madaris’ authorized to issue ‘sanads’ which held the status of a recognized matriculation and intermediate certificate. The Wifaqul Madarisul Arabia, Multan, the Wifaqul Madaris Al-Salfia (Ahale Hadith), Faisalabad, and the Tanzeemul Madaras (Ahale Sunnat), the Rabitatul Madaras-i-Islamia and the Wifaqul Madaras (Shia), Lahore, were the five institutions which were authorized to issue such ‘sanads’.

The additional advocate-general submitted that another five private religious institutions were also recognised by the Higher Education Commission to issue ‘sanads’ which were recognized equivalent to matriculation and intermediate.

The Jamia Islamia Minhajul Quran and the Jamia Ashrafia in Lahore, the Jamia Taleemat-i-Islami in Faisalabad, the Darul Uloom Mohammadia Ghausia in Sargodha and the Darul Uloom of Karachi were the private seminaries, he submitted.

The Supreme Court bench dismissed the candidatures of Maulvi Mohammad Idrees as nazims and deferred till Tuesday the one by Mohammad Akhtar on the request by his counsel Farooq Amjad Mir with the condition that he would produce an equivalence certificate.

The counsel stated that the appellant held a Shahadatul Aalmia degree which was equivalent to MA.

The apex observed the sanad might be on a par with the MA degree but the condition was that the student passed the compulsory subjects. Besides, the institution from which the sanad was obtained was not among those recognized by the Higher Education Commission.