ISLAMABAD: A three-member bench of the Supreme Court, which will commence hearing an appeal of former foreign minister and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Khawaja Mohammad Asif on Monday against the Islamabad High Court order that disqualified him, has been requested to decline the leave to appeal and also dismiss with cost his stay application against the high court verdict.

In a rejoinder before the SC, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf leader Mohammad Usman Dar argued that the findings given and conclusions reached in the judgement by the IHC were lawful, reasoned and correct, and did not warrant any interference. He said the IHC verdict should be upheld in the interest of justice, by declining the leave to appeal. He also urged the apex court to dismiss with cost the application for stay against the judgement.

The former minister in his appeal against his disqualification pleaded that the IHC had exercised its jurisdiction despite the fact that no allegation of corruption, fraud, embezzlement, accumulation of wealth, money laundering, misappropriation of public property or public funds or abuse of public authority for private gain was ever levelled against him.

But Mr Dar contended in his rejoinder that the arguments of Khawaja Asif about non-disclosure of what were claimed to be dormant bank account or non-disclosure of what were claimed to be negligible amounts of money was no valid defence. The applicant, who had contested the last elections against Khawaja Asif from the Sialkot constituency (NA-110), said the non-disclosure was by intentional to avoid payment of income tax and also to avoid questions regarding the source of funds and conflict of interest arising upon taking up membership of the National Assembly and federal cabinet.

Three-judge bench commences hearing of appeal tomorrow

Citing 2017 judgement in the Moham­mad Hanif Abbasi, the applicant highlighted that the Supreme Court had imposed a strict and high threshold for holders of public office in making full and true disclosure of assets.

The applicant also quoted the Panama judgement to emphasise that even if it is assumed that un-withdrawn salary constitutes an asset, omission to disclose it involving a violation of Sections 12 and 13 of the Representation of Peoples Act (RoPA) calls for the rejection of nomination papers or at its worst, removal of the petitioner from the public office and not his disqualification in terms of Section 99(1)(f) of RoPA and Article 62(1)(f) of the Constitution is devoid of force when the petitioner deliberately concealed his assets and wilfuly and dishonestly made a false declaration on solemn affirmation in his nomination papers.

Mr Dar alleged that the PML-N stalwart had been consistently concealing the fact of his “foreign salary income” from his full-time employment from his constituency, the electorates and the Election Commission of Pakistan. With this motive, intent and purpose, Khawaja Asif falsely stated his “present occupation” as “business” in entry 8 of the nomination form, the applicant said, adding that the object of falsely claiming his present occupation to be “business” was to mislead persons examining the nomination form and to camouflage and conceal his foreign salary income.

According to the applicant, entry 8 of the nomination form required “attested copies to be annexed” of evidence supporting the reply to this item in the nomination form but no attested documents substantiating this reply were appended with the nomination form. In entry 6 (assets brought or remitted from outside Pakistan) of the actual Statement of Assets and liabilities an amount of Rs6,820,964 was shown as “remittance” and there is also a cross reference to Annex-II. The said annexure II, in turn, contains disclosures of “salary” and “remittances” for the years 2010, 2011 and 2012.

The applicant argued that the segregation between “salary” and “remittances” was ought to be reported under the head of “salary”. In other words, if the salary income of Khawaja Asif was indeed intended to be disclosed it ought to have been reported under the head of “salary” in the said Annex-II.

However, Mr Asif claimed that there was no concealment of employment and entering the word business against the question of occupation in the nomination form was not wrongful. The definition of occupation according to a high court judgement itself includes business, employment and profession. Moreover, he said, the description of business as occupation was proper when his major income derived from businesses and the minor portion thereof was derived from employment.

The SC bench which will commence the hearing of appeal on Monday comprises Justice Umar Ata Bandial, Justice Faisal Arab and Justice Sajjad Ali Shah.

Published in Dawn, May 20th, 2018