July 10, 2007	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 24, 1428

PESHAWAR, July 9: An election tribunal of the Peshawar High Court on Monday dismissed a petition challenging the election of Senator Hafiz Abdur Rasheed from the Mohmand Agency.

The petition was filed by the rival candidate Muhammad Ayub claiming that Hafiz Rasheed was below 30 years of age at the time of the Senate poll in March last year and thus he was not qualified to enter the contest.

The tribunal presided over by Justice Ijazul Hassan had reserved the judgment on July 2.

The petitioner claimed that Hafiz Rasheed’s date of birth in his previous national identity card was July 15, 1975. However, in the new computerised NIC, he corrected the date and mentioned it as Sept 29, 1977. The senator confirmed the new date to the National Database Registration Authority on an affidavit.

The petitioner said that Hafiz Rasheed’s age according to his computerised NIC was 28 years and six months at the time of the Senate poll.

He contended that under Article 62(c) of the Constitution a person was not qualified to be elected as senator if he was less than 30 years of age.

Advocate Qazi Muhammad Anwer appeared for Senator Hafiz Rasheed and argued that he was over 30 years while filing nomination papers. He said the senator’s age was not recorded correctly in the computerised NIC and he had filed an application in a civil court for correction.

The civil court, Mr Anwer said, ordered correction of his date of birth and added that an advertisement had also been published in newspapers seeking objections from the general public against that correction. Following the court order another NIC was issued to the senator in which his age was corrected, he said.

Mr Anwer produced before the tribunal an old diary of MNA, Maulana Sadiq, father of Hafiz Rashid, in which he had recorded Hafiz Rasheed’s date of birth on the page carrying the date July 15, 1975.