LHC suspends 15 lawyers for holding fake degrees

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Monday suspended practice licences of 15 candidates participated in a recently held Punjab Bar Council’s election who are purportedly holding bogus degrees and observed that no one would be declared as winner until their degrees are verified.

Chief Justice Muhammad Qasim Khan is hearing a petition filed by senior lawyer Mrs Gulzar Butt against non-verification of LLB degrees of the candidates who had participated in Nov 28 election of the Punjab Bar council. As the hearing commenced, the Punjab University’s control examination submitted a report about the degrees of the candidates. He informed the court that degrees of 11 candidates, including former vice-chairman Shah Nawaz Ismail and outgoing executive committee chairman Jamil Asghar Bhatti (both reelected from Sheikhupura and Lahore, respectively) had not been verified.

The other candidates who faced suspension were Syed Tahir Hussain Bukhari, Muhammad Hafeez, Javed Bashir, Syed Muhammad Imran, Syed Tayyab Hussain Shah, Safdar Saleem, Muhammad Mazhar Iqbal, Tariq Riaz, Tahir Mehmood, Naurang Hayat, Amir Manzoor, Muhammad Ahsan and Raja Farooq Akram.

“The university has the record of all candidates and this report is only related to the verification of their LLB degrees,” the PU counsel informed the court.

Mrs Gulzar Butt had asked the court to also get the matriculation and FA certificates of the candidates verified in line with the Supreme Court order.

“I am convinced the democratic system should go on and the results could not be suspended for months for verification of the degrees,” Chief Justice Qasim Khan said.

The chief justice said where a bench of the high court was available the relevant registrar should get verified the lawyers’ degrees obtained from the other provinces as well.

“In case of a report against a candidate of the Bar the Retuning officer (advocate general Punjab) will reissue a notification,” the chief justice said.

The bench directed all candidates to submit their degrees to the Punjab Advocate-General within a week. The Punjab Bar Council had recently cancelled the legal practicing licences of eight lawyers after the Punjab University declared their LLB degrees as fake.