ISLAMABAD In a latest list handed over to the Election Commission of Pakistan by the Higher Education Commission, 150 lawmakers have been given clean chit by the HEC including Abid Sher Ali of PML-N who has been following the degree issue rigorously and facing much criticism for politicising the issue. Those who have been given clean chit by the HEC recently include Chairman National Assembly Standing Committee on Education Abid Sher Ali, Federal Minister for Tourism Atta-ur-Rehman, Minister for Defence Ahmed Mukhtar, National Assembly Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi, M Hanif Abbasi, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Hamza Shahbaz Sharif and Anoosha Rahman Khan of PML-N, Justice (R) Fakhar-un-Nisa Khokhar, M Jahangir Badar, Noor Alam Khan, Nawab Abdul Ghani Talpoor and Samina Mushtaq Pagganwala from PPP, Riaz Hussain Pirzada of PML-Q and Jahangir Khan Tareen of PML-F. So far, 541 degrees of parliamentarians have been declared genuine, 57 fake or invalid and 14 cases are subjudice. Eleven degrees were never provided to HEC for verification by ECP. And nearly 430 degrees are yet to be verified according to the process adopted by the HEC. Though the universities have verified the Bachelors degrees of these 430 lawmakers, their Metric and Intermediate degrees could not be verified due to non-cooperation of the parliamentarians. According to official sources, in few cases though the degree of Bachelor is genuine but the Matric and Intermediate degrees are fake or invalid so in such situations the verification of past record of the lawmakers academic credentials is crucial. As they have failed to submit their past record despite repeated reminders from the universities and the ECP as well, finally the record would be handed over to the ECP as HEC cannot force the parliamentarians in this regard. It has been learnt that most of the degrees have to come from Punjab University and out of 450 sent degrees it has verified 110 so far.