LAHORE, May 20: An election tribunal of the Lahore High Court on Tuesday summoned the superintendent of University Grant Commission (UGC) and the person in charge of Islamabad higher education department to record their statements regarding the procedure adopted for declaring provincial minister for industries Mohammad Ajmal Cheema’s foreign diploma certificate equivalent to graduation.
These directions were issued on an application of the petitioner, Saboor Ahmad Kassana, who had sought permission to allow him to produce the officials of UGC and other relevant quarters as additional witnesses against the respondent.
The petitioner is seeking cancellation of Mr Cheema’s membership of provincial assembly as the latter has allegedly filed a foreign diploma certificate for his nomination that is not equivalent to graduation.
Under the amended election rules, every contestant in last year’s general election was required to be at least a graduate. The degrees of certain foreign institutes recognised by the UGC as equivalent to graduation were also accepted by the Election Commission of Pakistan.
The tribunal however refused to summon the UGC controller and the Lahore Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) controller as additional witnesses in this connection, ruling that their testimony was not required.
The petitioner alleged that Mr Cheema had appended a diploma certificate issued by ‘Ashworth Institute’, Georgia, USA, with his nomination papers that were filed with the returning officer for PP-121 during the last general election. According to the petitioner, the ‘Ashworth Institute’ was not a recognised institution even in the US, nor was it recognised by the UGC. He further alleged that this diploma was not equivalent to a Pakistani graduation degree.
As argued by Mr Kassana, the Election Commission of Pakistan had sent the respondent’s diploma certificate to the UGC, which had cleared this document as equivalent to a graduation degree. “How could the UGC make such a declaration when firstly, the diploma certificate did not meet the conditions required for its equivalence to graduation and secondly the certificate-issuing authority was not recognised by the UGC,” the petitioner asked.
He asked the court to summon UGC superintendent Javed Khan — the man who had scrutinised Mr Cheema’s certificate. As pleaded by the petitioner, Mr Khan should be asked to explain the criteria he had adopted while equating the diploma certificate with a graduation degree.
Mr Kassana further claimed in his application that the respondent had not even cleared his intermediate examination and had failed in Urdu, Islamiat, English and Economics papers. “The respondent filed a fake intermediate degree that showed him a successful candidate from Murray College, Sialkot,” he alleged.
According to him, this allegation could be confirmed by the BISE record as there was no evidence regarding Mr Cheema’s successful appearance in the intermediate examination subsequently.
The testimony of the two witnesses would be recorded on June 19.