A division bench of the Lahore High Court on Tuesday rejected the nomination papers of former Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid MPA Pir Walayat Shah Khagga, who had sought to contest by-polls for PP-220, the constituency he had been disqualified from by the same court on August 18.
The bench headed by Justice Nasir Saeed Sheikh passed this order on a petition by Nazar Muhammad Fatyana, a defeated candidate from the same constituency in the 2008 election.
An LHC election tribunal on August 18, 2011, had disqualified Khagga from his Sahiwal seat because he had submitted a fake graduation degree. When the Election Commission announced a by-election for October 13, Khagga filed nomination papers for the seat, this time on a PML-Nawaz ticket.
The petitioner argued that Khagga’s nomination papers should not have been accepted, since he did not qualify to stand for the election under Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution.
Khagga, son of Pir Talib Ghafoor Shah Khagga, was born on May 1, 1955. According to his biography on the official website of the Punjab Assembly, he graduated in 2002 from the University of the Punjab, Lahore. He is an agriculturist and has thrice been elected to the Punjab Assembly (1988, 1993 and 2002), not including the 2008 elections.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 28th, 2011.
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