LAHORE FULL bench of the Lahore High Court on Tuesday disqualified former MNA and PML-N candidate Chaudhry Zahid Iqbal from contesting election from NA-162, Sahiwal-III. The bench dismissed the petition of Ch Zahid against orders of the returning officer and election tribunal which had declared him ineligible for contesting polls for having dual nationality. It upheld the order of returning officer and election tribunal when it was pointed out that the petitioner had been convicted in dual nationality case. Chaudhry Zahid had won 2008 election from the said constituency on a PPP ticket but joined PML-N a night before the allotment of the election symbols. In dual nationality case, Ch Zahid was held disqualified by the Supreme Court in October 2012 for holding a British nationality. He was earlier arrested in April for wrongly stating his dual nationality status while filing his nomination papers from NA-162 and was charged under articles 62 and 63 of the constitution. He was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment along with a fine of Rs5,000. Plea against AMPL: A single bench of Lahore High Court on Tuesday referred a petition, seeking cancellation of Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf’s party, All Pakistan Muslim League’s registration with election commission to full bench for hearing. On Tuesday, the petition came up for hearing before the single bench but the petitioner requested the bench to refer it to full bench which was earlier hearing a similar petition. Afaq Ahmad advocate filed the petition, stating that since the former military ruler and head of APML Pervez Musharraf had been disqualified from contesting May 11 general election, registration of his party was liable to be cancelled. He stated that a disqualified person could not form a political party. He requested the court to direct the election commission to cancel the registration of the APML. ECP: The Lahore High Court on Tuesday directed Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan candidate Qari Zawar Bahadur to approach the Election Commission of Pakistan against misprinting of his symbol on the ballot papers. It is worth mentioning here Qari Zawar Bahadur is a candidate from NA-126 of Lahore. The petitioner said the ECP had allotted a symbol of “key” to his party for elections but the sign of “dressing table” had been printed on the ballot paper. He maintained that he had campaigned in his constituency for the symbol of “key” and he would have to face difficulties by the wrong printing of “dressing table” on his party ballot papers. He requested the court to take notice of the mistake and direct the ECP to reprint the ballot papers of his party. On Tuesday, the court heard the petition as an objection case and directed him to approach the ECP to redress his grievance.
