KP Bar Council to get lawyers degrees verified

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Bar Council has decided to get degrees of all lawyers in the province verified from the relevant national and foreign educational institutions.
The decision was taken at an executive committee meeting of the council on Tuesday. The council chairman, Hashmat Nawaz, presided over the meeting that was attended by members of the executive committee including Ijaz Khan Sabi, Hazrat Rehman and Syed Jamal Badshah.
Ijaz Khan Sabi told The News the decision to get verified the registered and upcoming lawyers’ degrees from relevant educational institutions was taken after receiving unverified degrees of two lawyers for acquiring the licence. They had acquired the LLM degrees from foreign universities.
He said the purpose was to ensure that no one in the province is able to get licence for practicing law through fake degree. “The licenses of those with fake degrees would be cancelled,” he explained.
Currently, he said, around 35,000 lawyers were registered with the KP Bar Council. For verification of degrees, he said, a special cell would be established and Rs10 million has been allocated by the Bar Council.
Ijaz Khan Sabi said qualified staff would be hired for getting the degrees verified from the national and international universities. The Bar Council, he said, would not only take action against the lawyers whose degrees were found fake, but also file criminal cases against them.
The KB Bar Council meeting also asked the provincial government to provide forthwith relief to the Chitral flood affectees. A lawyers’ delegation would also visit Chitral to prepare report on the losses. They said the problems faced by the Chitral lawyers would also be resolved on an emergency basis.