Zubair Qureshi
The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday dismissed a plea seeking disqualification of three Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) MNAs— Kanwal Shauzab, Maleeka Bokhari and Tashfeen Safdar—elected on reserved seats for women.
Justice Aamir Farooq of the IHC issued the verdict in the case seeking disqualification of the PTI MNAs. The three lawmakers were elected on reserved seats for women from Punjab. The petition was filed last year by PML-N MNAs Tahira Bukhari and Shaista Pervaiz, seeking the disqualification of PTI MNAs under Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution. In December last year, Justice Farooq had reserved the judgment after hearing arguments from all sides.
The petitioners in their plea had claimed Bokhari was not eligible to participate in the general election as she held a dual nationality at the time of submission of her nomination papers. She submitted her nomination papers on June 10, 2018 but quit the British nationality on June 11, thus she misled the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and had lost the right to be Member of the Parliament. The petitioners alleged MNA Tashfeen Safdar concealed the information related to her dual nationality in her nomination papers. They claimed that Tashfeen Safdar had left the dual nationality in 2013 and in an affidavit had said she neither holds dual nationality nor applied for it, however, the nomination papers told a different story.
About MNA Kanwal Shauzab the petition added that she had given wrong information in documents to shift her vote from Islamabad to Rawalpindi.
