Nadra DG sacked over ‘fake degree’

ISLAMABAD: National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) Director General (DG) Zulfiqar Ahmed has been dismissed from service over fake degree, reports Geo News citing well-placed sources.

The development came days after the IHC dismissed his plea against the Higher Education Commission (HEC)’s decision to cancel his equivalent certificate.

Taking disciplinary action in line with the IHC’s verdict and unsatisfactory response to the show cause notice served on Ahmed, Nadra terminated his serves, the sources added. In 2018, Nadra directed him, among others, to get his degree verified. He provided “verification of degrees in the sealed envelope” to HEC. This pretended as if the verification certificates had been issued by the universities concerned and handed to him in a sealed envelope for submission to HEC, according to The News report.

The HEC could only bother to check that both institutions were recognised degree-awarding institutions as per the record of UNESCO and the USA’s Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA).

Regarding the verification of degrees, the HEC relied on the sealed envelopes handed to it by the applicant, Zulfiqar. It was not further checked by the university and provisional verification letters were issued. A subsequent letter from HEC issued in 2021 declared the verification certificates ‘authentic and genuine.’ However, the events unfolding later on suggested as if the verification certificates were made up by the applicant. And it was flagged by none other than his employer, Nadra . A letter in June this year alerted HEC that the documents were suspicious. His MBA degree became doubtful on the grounds that the person who signed it was not the president of George Mason University in 1990. Zulfiqar’s degree bore the signature of Edging R Marsey. In reality, George W Johnson was the university’s president at that time. This suggests the “provided degree may be tempered with, fabricated or fake,” reads Nadra letter to HEC. His BBA degree from Westwood College became doubtful on the grounds it didn’t exist in 1987 when Zulfiqar claimed to have earned it. The college was initially set up in 1953 as Denver Institute of Technology offering diploma and degree programmes. It was named the Westwood College in 1997. “The degree awarded to Zulfiqar in 1987 by Westwood College seems illogical and therefore is suspected to be fake,” Nadra wrote to HEC.