‘Convicts stand automatically disqualified for public office’

NAB appeal against Sherpao adjourned by the apex court.

ISLAMABAD: A candidate stands disqualified once he has been awarded punishment, said Justice Shakirullah Jan on Monday, during the hearing of Senator Muhammad Ali Rind’s appeal against the Balochistan High Court’s (BHC) decision to bar him from public office.

A division bench of the BHC had disqualified Senator Rind from holding public office in August, for concealing from the Election Commission that he was convicted for corrupt practices.

Mir Muhammad Akram Baloch, a former information minister of Balochistan, had challenged Rind’s Senate membership. Senator Rind subsequently filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against BHC’s verdict.

Rind’s counsel, Iftikhar Gilani contended that the petition was not maintainable since his client’s period of disqualification had ended on June 28, while the decision was handed down this August.

Presiding over a three-member bench, Justice Shakirullah Jan remarked, “There is no need to declare a person disqualified after he has been awarded punishment by a court.” Justice Jawad S Khawaja said since Senator Rind was awarded 10 years’ imprisonment, therefore articles 62 and 63 of the constitution which specify the qualifications for parliamentarians also apply in this case. The court adjourned hearing till September 21.

Sherpao case

The Supreme Court adjourned hearing of an appeal filed by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) against former interior minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao for illegally allotting plots in Peshawar, till September 29.

Cases instituted against Sherpao were closed after the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) in 2007. The cases were reopened, however, after the Supreme Court declared the NRO void ab initio (invalid from the beginning).

Published in The Express Tribune, September 20^th,  2011.