Monitoring Desk: It was February 2023 when a Nepali judge Omkar Upadhyaya was convicted of obtaining a fake academic certificate. The Judicial Council filed a corruption case against Upadhyaya on June 2, 2019, alleging that the bachelor’s degree certificate he had obtained from India, was fake. Upadhyaya resigned after the case was filed. The Judicial Council of Nepal sought a jail term of up to one year and a fine of up to Rs20,000 against Upadhyaya.
In November 2017, the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu found that a man managed to serve the Tamil Nadu Judicial Service as a Magistrate for more than 21 years without any recognized law degree. Former Magistrate Natarajan did his BGL ‘course’ at the Sarada Law College which is affiliated to the Mysore University in Karnataka for two years through the correspondence/distance education mode and was awarded a ‘degree’ and this certificate that he called a degree could not qualify him for the post of the judicial officer but he was selected as Judicial Magistrate on February 15, 1982, and after a ‘peaceful’ tenure of about 22 years and he retired on June 30, 2003.
In April 2023, The Supreme Court of India ordered the verification of the enrollment certificates of all lawyers and judicial officers, and a high-powered committee was constituted to monitor the process of verification of certificates of law practice and other educational degrees of over 25 lakh lawyers. The decision came in light of several instances where the degrees of lawyers and law/judicial officials were found fake.
Related Story: Karachi University declared the LLB degree of Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri ‘fake’
Now, an application has been moved to the Supreme Judicial Council against Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri claiming that his degree of law is fake. More revelations regarding the degree of Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri came out last week and the Principal of Government Islamia Law College Karachi Professor Moin Azhar Siddiqui also confirmed that Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri was not a student of the college from 1984 to 1991. The principal of the college also informed the Chairman of Sindh Higher Education Karachi and the Registrar of the University of Karachi about these facts.
It should be noted that Karachi University had declared the degree of Islamabad High Court Chief Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri as fake. The number recorded on Justice Tariq Mahmood Jahangiri’s degree year 1991 was already registered in 1987 in the name of Imtiaz Ahmed. Judicial circles have demanded an inquiry from the Supreme Court regarding the degree of Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri.
Two questions are being heard in the country. The first one is whether Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri will resign like Nepali judge Omkar Upadhyaya did when a fake degree was filed against him. The second question is, will the Supreme Court of Pakistan by following the precedence from the Supreme Court of India order verification of educational documents of members of the bench and bar?
