Constitutional compliance: High court orders Rana Asif be de-notified as MPA

Asif cannot hold seat on grounds of being a dual national, says LHC chief justice.

LAHORE:

The Lahore High Court Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial on Friday held that former Punjab finance minister Rana Asif Mahmood was disqualified from holding his provincial assembly seat because of his dual nationality.

Justice Bandial ordered the Election Commission to de-notify Asif as a Punjab assembly member. The justice issued the order on a petition filed by Faisal Ilyas Sadiq who had sought the disqualification of Asif because of his dual nationality.

Asif was elected an MPA in the 2008 general elections against one of the seats reserved for minorities. He was appointed as the provincial finance minister in 2012. He had resigned in June over the issue of dual nationality two days before provincial budget was to be presented.

The chief justice, on August 3, had suspended Asif as an assembly member.

The petitioner’s counsel Saiful Mulook had submitted that the apex court had already suspended the memberships of many parliamentarians on the grounds of holding dual nationality.

He said that Asif was a Canadian national and according to  Article 63 (1) of the Constitution he could not hold the assembly seat on the grounds of his dual nationality.

Asif’s counsel had said that the MPA was not a citizen of Canada but rather enjoyed the status of national. He said the constitutional bar on parliamentarians from holding dual nationality did not apply to his client. Mulook said that the MPA was trying to delay the matter. He said it was clear that Asif held an overseas identity card, which was issued only to those Pakistani citizens who held the passport of another country. He had produced a copy of the card in court.

The petitioner said Asif was a businessman in Canada but got elected an MPA by ‘posing’ as a Christian. He said his identity card listed him as Muslim.

He said that NADRA records also list his three children as Muslim, however, his wife was listed as a Christian.

Asif said that he was a permanent resident of Canada but not a Canadian national. Asif’s counsel said that the MPA had been wrongly listed as a Muslim in NADRA’s records due to a clerical error which had been corrected.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 17^th, 2012.