SC to hear Vawda’s plea against disqualification on March 1

A three-member bench headed by CJ Bandial will take up ex-senator’s appeal

ISLAMABAD:

Days after former senator Faisal Vawda moved the Supreme Court (SC) to appeal his lifelong disqualification, the apex court fixed March 1 as the date for hearing his petition.

A three-member bench of the top court headed by Chief Justice (CJ) Umar Ata Bandial and comprising Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar will hear the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader’s appeal.

After the Islamabad High Court (IHC) backed the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) decision of disqualifying Vawda for submitting a false affidavit regarding his dual citizenship, the former senator submitted a petition in the apex court last week.

Read IHC dismisses Faisal Vawda's plea against lifelong disqualification

The PTI leader was disqualified by the election watchdog for violating Article 62(1)(f) which pertains to being "sadiq (truthful) and "amin" (honest). The article provision sets the precondition for a member of parliament and is the same provision under which former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was disqualified by Supreme Court on July 28, 2017, in the Panama Papers case.

In the appeal, he requested the apex court to annul the earlier ECP decision and restore his senatorship, stating that the electoral watchdog did not have the power to disqualify him for life and that the ECP was not a competent court of law.

Two days later, he once again moved the top court for early hearing of his petition, citing “a risk of irreparable loss as well as ineffectiveness of the petition”.