SC accepts plea seeking Shah’s disqualification

ISLAMABAD: A review petition praying the Supreme Court for disqualification of Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on the basis of dual nationality was accepted for hearing on Tuesday.

A three-member bench, headed by Justice Azmat Saeed, heard the petition filed against the chief minister.

Petitioner lawyer Hamid Khan claimed that Shah had sworn a false oath in 2013 as he did not submit papers confirming his revocation of the Canadian citizenship.

Justice Saeed and Justice Ijazul Ahsan then issued a notice to the chief minister on the mater.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking disqualification of the chief minister.

Shah’s disqualification petition was dismissed by the returning officer, the court had said and added that the petitioner did not challenge the returning officer’s decision on a legal forum.

Justice Umar Ata Bandial believed that Shah had forfeited his dual nationality in 2013 and stated that ater vacating nationality, there isn’t a basis to disqualify him for dual nationality.

The petition seeks that Shah be declared ineligible as a member of the Sindh Assembly.

Lawyers say the main decision taken in a petition can’t be reversed during its review by the same court and the same bench unless there was some error floating on the face of the verdict. Earlier, it is reported that ater defeat of its no-trust motion against the Senate chairman, the opposition is now pondering over a plan to register a strong protest against National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser for not issuing production orders for its arrested members.

A senior Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader said that they had been raising the issue for the past many days and in almost every session of the assembly in a polite way, but it seemed that now they would have to devise a strategy to forcefully pressurise the speaker to issue production orders for the arrested legislators. The opposition members have been alleging that the speaker is not issuing production orders because he is under pressure directly from Prime Minister Imran Khan.

The other day, the issue was raised by PPP’S parliamentary leader Syed Naveed Qamar who said it was unprecedented in parliamentary history that six MNAS were behind bars at the same time.

Besides former president As if Zardari, other opposition lawmakers under detention are former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Pakistan Muslim League-nawaz (PML-N) stalwarts Khawaja Saad Rafique and Rana Sanaullah and two independent MPS from Waziristan, Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazir.