ISLAMABAD: An application requested the Supreme Court on Wednesday to ask the federal government to produce the document of presidential pardon granted to the Sharif brothers under Article 45 of the Constitution.

The application caused a stir in the courtroom because of its possible implications for proceedings on a set of identical review petitions filed by the federal government and the Sharif brothers against their electoral ineligibility.

A five-judge bench comprising Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani, Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk, Justice Mohammad Moosa K. Leghari, Justice Sheikh Hakim Ali and Justice Ghulam Rabbani said it would examine the request and give a ruling.

Advocate Ahmad Raza Qasuri, the counsel for Khurram Ali Shah, a voter, and Noor Elahi, an independent candidate on whose plea the Lahore High Court had disqualified Nawaz Sharif, requested the court to determine the nature of the pardon as everything being discussed about the presidential pardon was in vacuum.

‘In order to do complete justice and to prevent abuse of process of the court, the bench enjoys the inherent jurisdiction to ask for the documents relating to the presidential pardon as well as the writing off of loans in favour of the Sharifs so that these could be placed on the record of the petition before giving a final verdict in the matter,’ the application said.

The filing of the application preceded the statement of Attorney General Sardar Latif Khan Khosa who conceded before the court on Tuesday that the executive while exercising its power under Article 45 of the Constitution (pardoning by the president) could not be permitted to undo a judicial verdict (disqualification). He also said that the pardon did not wash out the conviction handed down by a court.

Advocate Qasuri said this was for the first time he had made the request for summoning the document in writing, although he accepted that he had made a similar request orally before a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court hearing appeals against the Sharif brothers’ disqualification.

Filed under Order 33 Rule 6 of the Supreme Court Rules 1980 read with Article 187 of the Constitution, the application said the document of pardon on which petitioner Nawaz Sharif was relying heavily was produced neither before the election appellate tribunal nor high court or the Supreme Court.