The Lahore High Court on Friday suspended a Pakistani tribunal’s decision to disqualify Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi from contesting from his home constituency of NH-57 (Rawalpindi-I) in the upcoming general elections on July 25. A two-judge bench asked the federal government and the Election Commission of Pakistan to appear for the next hearing on July 2, Dawn reported.
The appellate tribunal at the Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court on Wednesday disqualified Abbasi, a member of ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) party, saying that he had not disclosed the accurate value of his assets in his nomination papers. However, the prime minister was allowed to contest the polls from Islamabad.
Abbasi had said he would challenge the decision. “I declared an actual value of my property at the rate which my father bought it in 1974,” he said. “It is an election for the parliament. They have made it a joke.”
The Lahore High Court had on Thursday suspended the tribunal’s decision to disqualify Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf candidate Fawad Chaudhry from contesting from his home constituency of Jhelum. The election tribunal had cited the same reasons it disqualified Abbasi for.
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