PESHAWAR: The degree of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minister for Labour Sher Azam Khan Wazir has once again been declared fake by the institute he claimed to have attended to get a bachelor’s degree of business of administration.
The institute has earlier confirmed to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) that the degree in question is bogus.
The provincial minister, who won the provincial assembly election from the PF-71 Bannu constituency on the ticket of the Pakistan People’s Party against a former provincial minister affiliated to the Awami National Party, Baz Muhammad Khan, claimed to have got a degree of Bachelor of Business Administration from the Institute of Management Sciences, Lahore. He annexed the photocopy of the degree to his nomination papers to contest the 2008 election for the provincial assembly.
Soon after the polls, his opponent Baz Muhammad challenged his election to the provincial assembly in the court of law through senior lawyer Qazi Muhammad Anwar. Baz Muhammad took the plea that Sher Azam Wazir’s degree was a fake.
During the hearing of the case by the higher judiciary, the degree was sent to the Institute of Management Sciences in Lahore for verification. The institute declared it a fake. Again the degree of the provincial minister was sent to the Institute of Management Sciences, Lahore for verification on March 19, 2008 by the lawyer of Baz Muhammad for verification as the case was then being heard by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Through a letter Qazi Anwar requested the Institute of Management Sciences controller of examinations to verify the degree that Sher Azam Wazir claimed was issued by the institute on September 13, 2005.
The controller was informed that the degree had already been sent to his institute by Baz Muhammad and was examined by Ms Fozia Masood, assistant registrar, who had endorsed on the face of the photocopy of the degree that it was a fake document.
The institute examined the degree and replied to Qazi Anwar about the verification of the degree of Sher Azam Khan son of Haji Abdur Rehman, programme BBA, ID#013478. Azhar Iqbal Chaudhry, Registrar of the Institute of Management Sciences, Lahore, informed the lawyer of Baz Muhammad that their records revealed that the ID#013478 was not a valid ID and as such it did not exist in the record of the institute.
“Photocopy of the degree attached with your letter is also fake and bogus. We have already confirmed this in response to a query by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) on November 29, 2007,” the registrar of Institute of Management Sciences, confirmed.
Sher Azam Wazir could not be reached for comments on his three cell numbers. The photocopies of both the letters and degree with endorsement of Fozia Masood are available with The News.
