‘National, not citizen’: High court gives PML-N member ‘last chance’

Rana Asif Mahmood told to file written reply by July 18.

LAHORE:

The Lahore High Court on Tuesday gave former minister Rana Asif Mahmood a ‘last chance’ to file a reply on a petition that seeks his disqualification for having dual nationality.

At the last hearing, the MPA had said he was a “Canadian national but not a Canadian citizen”.  Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial had directed Mahmood to tell the court why he shouldn’t be considered a Canadian citizen when he held a Canadian passport.
When proceedings started on Tuesday, counsel for the MPA, Advocate Jamshed Rehmatullah, requested the court for more time to file a reply. The court wanted to fix the case for Wednesday (today) but the petitioner’s counsel said he would not be able to attend the hearing and on Thursday, Justice Bandial was unavailable. The court then fixed July 18 for the next hearing.
Saiful Mulook, the petitioner’s counsel, submitted that the respondent was trying to protract the hearing “to enjoy the assembly seat for as long as he can”. He said the former minister was aware that the court would disqualify him and so he was seeking adjournments.
On July 5, Mulook submitted that according to Section 4 of the Canadian Passport Order 1981, only a Canadian citizen could be issued a Canadian passport.
The petitioner said that Mahmood also had an overseas identity card, which is only granted to a citizen of another country. He said that under Article 63 of the Constitution, a person holding dual nationality could not be elected as member of the national or provincial assembly. Mulook had earlier produced a copy of an overseas identity card issued to Mahmood.

Previously, the CJ had noted that since the SC had already suspended the membership of several parliamentarians for the same reason, the matter needed to be decided quickly.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 11^th, 2012.