February 08, 2008	Friday	Muharram 29, 1429

PESHAWAR, Feb 7: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday set aside disqualification of Pakistan People’s Party candidate Niaz Mohammad and allowed him to run for the provincial assembly seat PF-10, Peshawar.

A two-member bench comprising Justice Hamid Farooq Durrani and Justice Syed Mussadiq Hussain Gillani accepted a writ petition filed by Mr Mohammad and dismissed a petition filed by the rival candidate, Ayaz Afridi.

The bench set aside the orders of district returning officer and the returning officer whereby Mr Mohammad was declared disqualified and fresh Form-V carrying the names of the other candidates was issued.

He was disqualified on the ground that he had produced fake graduation degree of the University of Peshawar.

Advocate Naveed Maqsood appeared for Mr Mohammad and contended that the petitioner’s nomination papers were accepted and his name was included in the Form-V. He stated that nobody had raised any objection against his papers at the time of filing of the objections. He added that subsequently he was also allotted the election symbol.

Mr Maqsood argued that once his name was included in Form-V the DRO and the RO had no authority to remove the same. He contended that the DRO had erred in issuing orders to the RO for deleting the name of the petitioner from Form-V. He added that now the candidature of the petitioner could only be challenged before an election tribunal after the polls.

He argued that the petitioner was in possession of legitimate bachelor’s degree and due to minor clerical mistake, which was later on corrected by the university, his rival candidate had been exploiting the same and creating confusion so as to throw him out of elections.