CHANDIGARH: The fake degree row involving India women’s T20 captain Harmanpreet Kaur is not that the first time that the scourge of clandestine institutions and shady racketeers has come to the fore in Punjab.
There have been allegations that scores of employees ‘purchased’ fake degrees for promotions or recruitments. Though governments at various points issued orders to check veracity of the educational degrees, it is needless to state that allegations still abound.
The health department had issued orders to investigate the degrees of its employees after a fake BAMS degree racket was detected some months ago.
In July 2017, Punjab health minister Brahm Mohindra ordered the probe after complaints that fake certificates and degrees of Bachelor of Ayurveda Medicine and Surgery (BAMS) were being issued in the name of the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences at Faridkot.
It was sheer luck that the fraud was detected when a Gurdaspur resident went to the Punjab Board of Ayurvedic and Unani Systems of Medicine for renewal of his registration certificate. During verification, the Board registrar had found that the registration certificate was fake as it was already issued in the name of another person.
Another similar scandal struck the Local Bodies Department after which it issued order to its officials for checking the degrees of all those employees who had submitted the degrees/diplomas of any deemed university after 2001.
Sources said that from time to time the police has caught number of gangs selling degrees of Panjab University, Bundelkhand University and Manav Bharti University besides various state school boards.
Two years ago, the Mohali Police had unearthed a fake degree racket with the arrest of three people. The racketeers sold fake degrees for prices ranging from Rs 2,500 to Rs 10,000. The police had seized more than 1,500 fake degrees, three laptops, a computer, a scanner, a number of fake stamps of various educational institutions.
In 2015, the Mansa Police had busted the fake degree racket of Global University, Nagaland, which had 200 centres across the country. Many students had bought the degrees by paying anything between Rs 9,000 and Rs 35,000.
Gusty cricketer puts on a brave front
CHANDIGARH: Caught in the midst of a raging row over her educational degrees, the Indian cricketer has asserted that she had cleared all her examinations fairly. In fact, Harmanpreet e went on to forcefully tell the media that she would have done her graduation two or three times and square if she had known anything was wrong with her degree. “ On the basis of my graduation certificate, I took admission for a PG course in a different university,” she added.