LAHORE, Aug 27: The Supreme Court has adjourned till Sept 22 a petition for leave to appeal moved by Shahid Khalil, since elected naib nazim from a union council in Faisalabad from the panel of Shaukat Ali, who was also elected nazim from the same electoral area according to unofficial results.

The two were holding sanads issued by a religious institution in Mardan and were allowed conditionally by an earlier three-member bench of the apex court to contest elections. The bench fixed Aug 26 and 27 as the next dates of hearing their appeals against a decision of the Lahore High Court, which dismissed their candidature on the grounds that their sanads were not on a par with the matriculation certificates.

They were also given a grace period to produce equivalence certificate, which they failed to submit. The returning officer and the district returning officer also rejected their nomination papers on the same grounds when their rival candidate, Aminul Hassan Hashmi, objected to their candidature.

The full bench of the Supreme Court, comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Faqir Muhammad Khokhar and Justice Sayed Saeed Ashhad, restrained the Election Commission of Pakistan from notifying the result of Shahid Khalil.

The court observed that it had taken a definite view of authenticity of sanads as qualification to contest for nazim and naib nazim in four civil petitions decided on Aug 16 and, as such, was bound by its own judgment.

The other bench allowed the candidates to contest conditionally weeks before the Supreme Court laid down the criteria for the acceptance of the seminaries’ certificates. The fate of the appellants will now be decided in the fourth week of September.