LAHORE: Fear of action against the vice chancellors (VC), who verified the degrees of parliamentarians without following the criteria set out by the Higher Education Commission (HEC), has forced the varsities’ administrations to strictly start overlooking the degree verification process, while also checking the Matriculation and Intermediate records of parliamentarians, Daily Times learnt on Wednesday.

The administrations of the universities that are engaged in verifying the degrees are also worried after not getting any relaxation with regards to the deadline given by the HEC.

More records: Some varsities, including the Punjab University (PU), have asked the HEC to also send them the Matriculation and Intermediate records of parliamentarians.

All the universities engaged in the degree verification process have increased the pace of their work after the announcement of disciplinary action by the National Assembly Standing Committee on Education and the HEC, which will be taken against the varsities not verifying the degrees according to the HEC’s criteria. According to some sources within the HEC, a plan has been devised to take action against the VCs of those varsities who have been ‘disturbing’ the verification processes, have been unable to meet the HEC’s deadline and have been irresponsible while checking the degrees. They said the HEC had suffered a lot due to the irresponsibility of the VCs, many of which sent back the degrees without verifying them as per the commission’s criteria.

Due to this attitude of several varsities, the HEC has now sent back the degrees to the universities for re-evaluation, the sources said, adding that more than 500 degrees were sent back to the universities for re-evaluation, which included PU, Allama Iqbal Open University, Karachi University, Sindh University and Balochistan University, and some universities from Peshawar as well. They said that an inquiry would be held against the VCs who have shown irresponsibility and have ignored the HEC’s instructions regarding the degree verification process.

After the announcement of this inquiry, the varsities have started taking the task seriously, while some have also written to the HEC, asking them to send further documents for verification. The PU also wrote to the HEC, asking for Intermediate certificates of around 18 parliamentarians. The PU Public Relations director said that the names of these 18 parliamentarians have not been disclosed, as per the university’s policy.

According to a PU spokesman, the committee that is verifying the degrees has ‘doubts’ over the bachelor’s degrees and has therefore asked for the Intermediate certificates of the parliamentarians to be reviewed as well. It is important to mention here that there are still 78 parliamentarians’ degrees still left to be reviewed at PU, while the verification report of 2,809 parliamentarians’ degrees has already been sent to the HEC, amongst which 11 degrees had been declared fake.

Separately, sources from the HEC said that the varsities’ demand to provide Matriculation and Intermediate certificates was “astonishing”, since all of them had submitted the reviewed degrees earlier without seeking these certificates.

The sources said that the VCs had already been told not to show any reluctance in verifying the degrees. “The VCs, however, ignored the HEC’s instructions after which the commission asked the varsities to send back the degrees so the commission could itself check the degrees following the proper criteria,” they said, adding that the HEC has denied all requests of the varsities for extending the deadline and have instructed the varsities to complete the degrees’ verification by July 23.