ISLAMABAD: Hanif Abbasi of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz moved an application before the Supreme Court on Saturday with a request to hear his petitions seeking disqualification of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan and PTI general secretary Jehangir Tareen, and to throw out the Panamagate case which a five-bench of the court is dealing with.

Mr Abbasi, through his counsel Muhammad Akram Sheikh, had sought the PTI leaders’ disqualification under charges of false declaration before the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), non-disclosure of assets in offshore companies, and for being a foreign-funded party.

The petitions are expected to be taken up on Monday by a two-judge bench comprising Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali and Justice Amir Hani Muslim.

In his fresh application, Mr Abbasi recalled that during the hearing of the Panama Papers leaks case on Nov 3, his counsel had pointed out the pendency of these petitions and had moved a request to fix the case with connected matters. To this, the chief justice had replied that an order had been passed regarding hearing of the petitions and connected matters.

However, after the hearing of the larger bench, the office was reluctant to fix Mr Abbasi’s petitions with the Panamagate case, the application claimed.

Published in Dawn, November 6th, 2016