LAHORE, Dec 1: A returning officer on Saturday rejected nomination papers of former Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif for one National Assembly and two provincial assembly seats.

Rival candidates from NA-112, PP-141 and PP-142 raised objections to Mr Shahbaz’s nominations and alleged that he had defaulted on bank loans, engineered an attack on the Supreme Court and was a proclaimed offender.

Returning Officer Ashtar Abbas, who heard the objections, said that in 2002 an election tribunal had disqualified Shahbaz Sharif after declaring him a defaulter. When Mr Shahbaz filed an appeal, a five-member bench of the Lahore High Court had upheld the verdict of the tribunal, he added.

“The situation is still the same and nothing has changed over the years,” the RO said in his order.

Khwaja Haris, counsel for Mr Shahbaz, said his client was not a defaulter because he was only a guarantor of the units which availed the loan.

He said that a consortium of banks, led by the National Bank of Pakistan, had thrashed out with the management of the units the mode of return of the loan.

The returning officer said Mr Shahbaz did not turn himself in to the anti-terrorism court, which had declared him a proclaimed offender, and had issued ‘perpetual warrants’ of arrest. “It is a settled principle of law that a fugitive loses all rights a normal person is entitled to under the procedural and substantive law,” he added.

An anti-terrorism court had issued arrest warrants for Shahbaz Sharif, when he was in exile, in a case pertaining to a ‘staged’ police shootout involving killing of five men.