A seven-member Supreme Court (SC) bench on Thursday resumed hearing of the lifetime disqualification case. The hearing pertains to a case concerning the lifetime disqualification of Sardar Meer Badshah Qaisrani – a former member of Punjab Assembly – before the 2018 elections. And interestingly, even Saqib Jilani, the counsel leading the original plea against Qaisrani, told the court that he was against the original Supreme Court verdict. Chief Justice Faez Isa is heading the bench which also comprises Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, Justice Yahya Afridi, Justice Aminuddin, Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail, Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar and Justice Musarrat Hilali. The Supreme Court had disqualified PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif for lifetime over corruption allegations. A five-member bench of the country’s apex court had unanimously ruled that anyone disqualified under the constitutional clause requiring legislators to be “honest and trustworthy” would be considered banned for life.

Although the nomination papers of Nawaz from both constituencies NA-15 and NA-130 were accepted by the respective returning officers, an election tribunal has been moved against him in Lahore. The objections were raised on Monday in the case of NA-130 in Lahore on the grounds of his lifetime disqualification under Article 62 (1) f of the Constitution in July 2017, which ended his third five-year term to yet another premature end. Previously, he had fallen a prey to the “Kakar formula” in 1993 and later a Pervez Musharraf-led coup in 1999. The similar objections were raised by the rival PTI lawyers in Mansehra in the case of NA-15 at the initial stage of filing of nomination papers. But the returning officer rejected these on the basis of the changes introduced in the Election Act 2017.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)