LAHORE, Dec 18: A division bench of the Lahore High Court, hearing a petition challenging the presidential referendum, adjourned on Wednesday the proceedings for Thursday (today) to hear detailed arguments on the merits of petitioner’s evidence.

Attorney General Mukhdoom Ali argued before the bench comprising Justice Tassadaq Jilani and Raja Muhammad Sabir that the threshold question for the court should be whether the newspaper clippings being produced as corroboratory evidence were convincing enough for the court to proceed further with the hearing of the main prayer.

He further submitted that in case court could conclude at the preliminary stage of the hearing that the evidence was not admissible for some reasons, it would save both the parties from being a part of a lengthy and futile exercise.

The attorney general also requested the court to direct the petitioner for giving a certain time frame for completing his arguments to save the time and energy of both the court and the parties to the petition.

Earlier, petitioner A.K.Dogar submitted that newspaper reports were an admissible evidence before a court of law. Referring to the Nusrat Bhutto and Zafar Ali Shah cases, he said the Supreme Court had ruled (in these cases) that newspaper clippings were to be admitted as evidence for those matters in which there was no eye-witness testimony available. The petitioner argued that since the government had not contradicted these newspaper reports on the alleged massive rigging in presidential referendum, they would be considered as a concrete evidence. The bench members however inquired from the petitioner whether he could quantify the extent of rigging in the referendum or could refer to any complaint lodged with the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) in this regard. They feared that in case of negative answer to both of these queries, the judicial hearing on this petition would turned out be a an academic exercise only. The petitioner claimed this was a 100 per cent foolproof case and he would substantiate the validity of the evidence later on.