Last-Minute Ban: Supreme Court bars candidate from poll

Pervaiz Gill had moved the apex court against the candidature of Saifullah Gill after LHC had refused to interfere.

ISLAMABAD:

A Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) candidate from Faisalabad suffered shock just hours before the polling starts for 2013 general elections when on Friday the Supreme Court barred him from contesting elections on Punjab provincial seat from Faisalabad.

“We direct that Chaudhry Saifullah Gill of the PML-N is restrained from contesting the election from constituency No. PP-61 Faisalabad,” directed a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

The bench had taken up an appeal of a PML-Q candidate Khalid Pervaiz Gill against the April 25, 2013 order of the Lahore High Court (LHC) in which the court had refused to interfere in the election process.

Khalid Pervaiz had moved the apex court against the candidature of Saifullah Gill regarding an objection presented before the Returning Officer (RO) that Saifullah had tampered with his secondary school certificate showing his date of birth as April 2 1979 instead of August 2, 1981 at the time when he was a candidate for the seat of Nazim of Union Council 134 in 2005.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 11^th, 2013.