ISLAMABAD: The Sup­reme Court on Friday unseated Abdul Munim, a Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) member of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly from the PK-88 (Shangla-II) constituency.

Mr Munim’s opponent Sher Alam Khan of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl had challenged his election in the Peshawar High Court on the grounds that the candidate had concealed the facts that he was a school teacher. However, the high court had on Aug 15 last year rejected Mr Khan’s petition.

Mr Munim had obtained 10,267 votes, while Sher Alam bagged 7,652 votes in the 2013 general election.

A three-judge SC bench headed by Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed disqualified Abdul Munim on the grounds that he was a government servant who had resigned from his post just before the 2013 elections.

Mr Khan was represented by senior counsel Mohammad Akram Sheikh and Mr Munim by Naeem Bukhari.

After winning the election, Mr Munim joined the PTI and was appointed special assistant to the KP chief minister in April 2014.

On April 19 last year, the Election Commission of Pakistan, while accepting his opponent’s application, had also declared Mr Munim disqualified.

During the hearing in the apex court, Mr Bukhari denied that his client had ever been a school teacher or a government employee. He was never paid salary through any bank and the medical certificate furnished by the petitioner was someone else and not of Mr Munim, the counsel said.

On the other hand, Akram Sheikh contended that Mr Munim had been serving as a school teacher since March 14, 1987, which had been mentioned on the salary slip he had been receiving since 2013.

The petitioner argued that at time of filing of the nomination forms for the election, Mr Munim was serving as a primary school teacher in grade-12 at the Government Primary School in Baja Bela, Kohistan district.

He said Mr Munim had even received through his personal bank account his monthly salary as the school teacher for March 2013 with separate salary slip for that month. The salary slip showed that Mr Munim had been the primary school teacher for 26 years and 19 days and his personal number with the KP accountant general was also shown as 00335754, the petitioner added.

The petition said the KP accountant general also confirmed that Mr Munim had served as school teacher. The documents, it added, also confirmed that Mr Munim’s salary was stopped after his retirement on March 31, 2013.

The elections were held on May 11, 2013.

Contempt case

The same SC bench adjourned the contempt of court proceedings against Privatisation Minister Daniyal Aziz of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz to March 6, but cautioned his counsel Advocate Ali Raza against dragging his feet over the matter, saying that banks did not extend facilities when the limit of credit cards expired.

Likewise, there was also a limit here and the one should avoid reaching that limit, Justice Saeed said, adding: “Don’t play games which I have invented.”

At the outset of the proceedings when the judge noticed the unfolded multimedia screen, he wondered what film the counsel intended to show and, in his usual cheerful manner, asked if the movie being shown had won some “Oscar”.

The counsel, however, said he had moved an application with a request to provide material so that he could file a reply on the basis of which the contempt of court proceedings had been initiated against his client.

The court ordered that the minister be provided the Sept 9, 2017 news item published in Urdu daily Dunya about Mr Danial’s Sept 8 press conference.

But the counsel disputed the contents of the news item, saying these were not correct.

The court also provided the video clips of Dawn News (Dec 21, 2017) and of Neo TV channel (Dec 15, 2017).

On Feb 19, the Supreme Court issued a show-cause notice to Daniyal Aziz with an observation that prima facie different statements of the minister amounted to contempt of the court.

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2018