LAHORE - The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday suspended practice licences of 15 candidates of Punjab Bar Council elections, held on November 28, over fake LLB degrees. The court also restrained from issuing notification of successful candidates having bogus degrees.
The court ordered that nomination papers of candidates, participating in the upcoming elections of district and tehsil bar associations of Punjab, should not be accepted till the verification of their degrees.
LHC Chief Justice Muhammad Qasim Khan passed the orders while hearing a petition filed by a senior lawyer, Miss Gulzar Butt, for verification of the degrees of all contesting candidates of the bar in the light of Apex Court orders.
At the start of proceedings, Punjab University’s (PU) Controller Examination along with counsel appeared before the court. The PU’s counsel apprised the court that the process for verification of LLB degrees of 230 candidates of PbBC elections had been completed and degrees of 15 candidates were found bogus.
He apprised that result cards of Syed Tahir Hussain Bukhari and Muhammad Hafeez were found bogus whereas degrees of Javaid Bashir, Syed Muhammad Imran, Safdar Saleem, Tayyab Hussain Shah, Mazhar Iqbal, Tariq Riaz , Jamil Asghar Bhatti, Chaudhry Shahnawaz Ismail, Muhammad Ahsan, Tahir Mehmood, Norang Hayat, Raja Farooq, and Amir Manzoor could not be verified.
At this, the petitioner submitted that educational certificates of Matric, F.A, and B.A of candidates should also be verified, as per Apex court orders.
She submitted that fake degree holders were still part of the bar, while referring to the report submitted by the university.
At this, the Chief Justice remarked that the election results could not be stopped for four months on the ground of verification of degrees. He observed that a commission was being formed, headed by the Registrar and if degree of a candidate was found bogus, then the Returning Officer would reissue the notification.
The court directed all candidates to submit their degrees to the Advocate General Punjab within a week. The court further observed that the Registrar would send the degrees to the universities for verification.