DERA ISMAIL KHAN: An election tribunal has disqualified Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Agriculture Minister Sardar Ikramullah Khan Gandapur as a member of the provincial assembly and ordered re-election in his constituency, PK-67, Dera Ismail Khan.

Mr Gandapur, who belongs to the PTI, had won the seat in a by-election held on Dec 15 last year. The seat fell vacant after the death of his brother Israrullah Gandapur in a suicide bombing in Kulachi tehsil on Eidul Azha last year.

The tribunal’s presiding officer, Syed Yahya Zahid Gillani, upheld on Wednesday a petition filed by Sardar Fatehullah Miankhel, an independent candidate, who contended that Sardar Ikramullah had submitted a fake degree along with his nomination papers for the 2008 general elections when being a graduate was a mandatory requirement for a candidate.

The petitioner said the minister was not ‘righteous and sagacious’ as required under Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution and, therefore, was not qualified to be a member of the assembly because he had given a false undertaking in 2008 that he was a graduate.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2014