ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader and former minister, Daniyal Aziz, on Saturday challenged his disqualification by the Supreme Court (SC) in a case pertaining to contempt of court.
The Supreme Court had on June 28 found former federal privatisation minister Daniyal Aziz guilty of contempt of court and sentenced him till the rising of the court, which rendered him disqualified to contest elections for a period of five years under Article 63 (1) (g) of the Constitution.
Following the verdict, Aziz’s legal counsel had announced that his client would file a review petition in the Supreme Court. More than a month after that verdict, Aziz filed the appeal on Saturday.
The SC had served Aziz a contempt of court notice earlier this month for his “anti-judiciary” speech. However, the court had not specified which speech by the PML-N leader had caught the judges’ attention.
On December 20, 2017, a few days after the SC had cleared Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan in a disqualification case, Aziz, on the floor of the National Assembly had recounted the entire history of the Panama Papers case and questioned the way the courts had conducted the matter.
Stopping just short of blaming Nawaz’s ouster in the Panama Papers case on a ‘grand conspiracy’, he had recalled how the Jamaat-e-Islami had filed a petition naming all 450 Pakistanis mentioned in the Panama Papers with the SC, which was declared frivolous and rejected.
Moreover, the apex court on Saturday also said that the case regarding the losses caused to the national exchequer by the National Reconciliation Ordinance will be heard on August 7.
The SC issued notices to former presidents, General (r) Pervez Musharraf and Asif Ali Zardari, and attorney general of Pakistan.
A three-member bench of the SC will hear the case.
The NRO was promulgated in Oct 2007 by the government of the then president Musharraf. Under the ordinance, cases against politicians were removed, paving the way for many of their return to country.
