PESHAWAR, April 15: A two-member bench of the Peshawar High Court upheld on Wednesday disqualification of a union Nazim by an election tribunal and ordered by-election on the vacant seat.

The bench, comprising Justice Nasirul Mulk and Justice Tallat Qayyum Qureshi, dismissed a writ petition of Andre Shehar union council Nazim Syed Iqbal Mehdi. The bench ruled that under the law the Nazim and Naib Nazim got elected jointly on one panel, therefore, with the disqualification of one of them the other would also stand disqualified.

An election tribunal had disqualified both Syed Iqbal and Naib Nazim Bunyad Hussain more than an year ago on the ground that the latter was not a matriculate, which is a pre-condition for contesting the local government elections.

Mr Mehdi moved the high court with the request that he should not be punished for the fault of Naib Nazim. In the local government elections in 2001, the panel of Syed Mehdi had defeated the rival panel of Mohammad Ali Safi.