LAHORE, Oct 7: The Lahore High Court is likely to take up on Wednesday an objection petition of PML-N president Shahbaz Sharif filed against the LHC office’s objection to his petition seeking the reversal of the trial court’s orders through which he had been declared a proclaimed offender.

After having rejected the petition twice on grounds that he could not move the LHC without surrendering in the anti-terrorism court, the office finally marked his objection petition for regular hearing.

The court would first decide the validity of the office objection and the main petition would be heard only if the objection was not sustained by the court. The counsel had been arguing before the office that it did not have the jurisdiction to raise such an objection which could only be raised by the court within its constitutional jurisdiction.

An anti-terrorism court had declared Shahbaz Sharif a proclaimed offender for not having appeared before it in the proceedings of a case accusing him and six other police officials of having murdered five youths in a staged police encounter during April 1998. The petitioner had pleaded the LHC to direct the trial court to summon him from abroad since he had not absconded the country nor had he received the court summons abroad. —Reporter