ISLAMABAD: Senator-elect Ishaq Dar pleaded before the Supreme Court on Saturday that neither the Constitution nor the country’s election laws barred individuals from contesting elections for parliament, even if they had been declared absconders.

The former finance minister, through his counsel Salman Aslam Butt, moved a rejoinder to a petition by Muhammad Nawazish Ali Pirzada in the Supreme Court in which he had challenged a Lahore High Court (LHC) verdict allowing Mr Dar to contest the March 12, 2018 Senate elections.

He also accused Mr Dar of being an absconder from judiciary.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz stalwart asked the Supreme Court to dismiss Mr Pirzada’s petition for not being maintainable and for violating various provisions of the Constitution.

A three-judge Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, will take up the petition moved by Mr Pirzada on Tuesday. At the last hearing, the Supreme Court had directed Mr Dar to appear in court.

Rejoinder to petition challenging defunct minister’s election to Senate submitted to Supreme Court

In response, the former finance minister furnished a concise statement in which he stressed that the 18th Amendment had repealed the amendment inserted through the Legal Framework Order, and then preserved through the 17th Amendment in Article 63(1) of the Constitution, in which a person convicted of absconding was disqualified from contesting elections.

He argued that it was clear that ever since the enactment of the 18th Amendment, there was no prohibition under the Constitution, on someone who has been declared an absconder, from contesting Senate elections.

On Dec 11, 2017 an accountability court had declared Mr Dar an absconder in a corruption reference after he had repeatedly failed to attend the trial proceedings against him.

In his rejoinder, Mr Dar has argued that a person who has been declared an absconder is not deprived of constitutional and civil rights which include the right to contest elections.

Provisions under Article 62 also did not apply to absconders, as they dealt with qualification of parliamentarians, he said, adding that he had explained why he couldn’t attend his trial in the accountability court.

The rejoinder noted that the law favoured a liberal interpretation in facilitating people in contesting elections, and that a writ petition disenfranchising a candidate could not be readily invoked in the ‘post-election-stage’. It said that Mr Pirzada’s petition was not maintainable on these grounds.

Such a matter should be raised at an appropriate stage in an appropriate manner before the competent tribunal, instead of a court, said the rejoinder, adding that otherwise Article 225 of the Constitution would be deprived of its meaning and content.

The rejoinder contended that the petitioner (Mr Pirzada) did not have locus standi to assail the high court order since he had neither objected to Mr Dar’s nomination papers during the scrutiny process, nor did he file an appeal or cross-appeal against the order of the returning officer who had accepted his nomination papers.

In his challenge, Mr Pirzada had objected to Mr Dar’s election to the Senate, stating that the former finance minister was not entitled to contest polls under Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution. The entire system would be affected if an absconder was allowed to contest elections, the petition had contended.

Published in Dawn, April 22nd, 2018