Supreme Court (SC) has dismissed on merit petitions challenging the eligibility of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif for contesting polls for his alleged involvement in attacking the apex court.
Justice Saqib Nisar remarked that the election tribunals functioned under the law and would not have allowed any such person if SC had been attacked upon. He gave these remarks while presiding over a two-member SC bench on Tuesday.
The petitioner Shahid Orakzai read out the decision of subordinate court in respect of Shahbaz’s eligibility case. Islamabad Police was directed to probe into the case of alleged attack on SC by Shahbaz and his associates within four months. However, no report has been presented in this respect.
Justice Nisar asked the petitioner if he had challenged Shahbaz’s nomination papers after they were accepted. The petitioner said that the returning officer had accepted the nomination papers prior to his objections.
The court inquired from counsel to federation Attique Shah if he had filed the reply, to which the counsel replied in negative, adding that federation had not been made a respondent in the case.
Attorney General Mustafa Ramday added to the argument saying that the federation had nothing to do with the attack on SC and thus was not liable to file a reply. Justice Nisar kept pondering over the maintainability of the petition and questioned Orakzai under which principles he should hear the case. Orakzai said that he was not given a right to appeal in 2002 from the high court and alleged that the case was left stranded to facilitate former president Pervez Musharraf.
The justice explained that Musharraf had nothing to do with a case on Shahbaz’s eligibility and asked Orakzai if he had filed an appeal with the tribunal against the acceptance of nomination papers of the CM.
Orakzai said that he had approached the election tribunal in this regard but had not touched the returning officer. He argued that busses of Punjab Tourism Department had been used in the attack on the court and thus Shahbaz ‘had to be’ involved in the case.
Annoyed over Orakzai’s inability to make a stable argument, Justice Nisar and Justice Ejaz repeatedly directed Orakzai to maintain his arguments in accordance with his petition and abstain from side tracking.
Orakzai replied that there was no bar on filing petition under Article 225 of the Constitution. “You are stating three periods in your stance which include holding of elections ahead of electoral process and post polls problems. Election tribunals work only under the law. High courts too are custodian of SC. Had Shahbaz attacked the apex court, the high courts would not have allowed such a person to contest polls,” the bench concluded, rejecting the two petitions on merit and third for want of arguments.
