ISLAMABAD, Aug 2: Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Punjab’s ex-chief minister Shahbaz Sharif on Thursday moved the Supreme Court seeking its help to return to Pakistan for participating in the coming elections.

The brothers contended in separate petitions that the apex court should declare that they and members of their family had inalienable rights to live in Pakistan and take part in the general elections. The Supreme Court has been requested to direct the government not to force them to live abroad in continued exile.

Elections are expected by November after the present national and provincial assemblies complete their term on November 15.

The PML-N leaders, who are currently living in London, denied official claims of having left the country after striking a deal with the Musharraf government.

Nawaz Sharif denied in his petition that he had had gone into exile as a result of some deal and said that even after seven long years no document had been produced by the government to prove its allegations about the deal, which even otherwise would be unconstitutional and illegal.

Senior lawyer Fakhruddin G. Ibrahim has drafted the petitions. The federal government through the interior ministry secretary and the four provincial governments through their respective chief secretaries have been made respondents. The petitions give special power of attorney to Hamza Shahbaz Sharif.

Nawaz Sharif recalled in his petition that he had been denied his right to participate in the 2002 elections through a mala fide amendment to the law whereby candidates were required to be present in person to support their nominations. At a time when he was forced to live in exile, he alleged, his signed nomination papers had been rejected in a bid to obliterate his party.

Despite clear and unequivocal order of the Supreme Court in 2004 that his brother Shahbaz Sharif was a citizen of Pakistan and had the constitutional right to come to the country and live here, the government had acted in defiance of the apex court ruling and upon his arrival in Lahore he was forcibly deported to Saudi Arabia by a special flight.

The circumstances under which Shahbaz Sharif’s efforts to seek protection from the Lahore High Court had been thwarted, he said, were also a matter of public record.

As a leader of a national political party, the petitioner said, he was eager to organise the party to participate in elections. “My party has twice been voted into power by the people of Pakistan.”

Nawaz Sharif was arrested soon after his ouster from the government in a bloodless military coup in October 12, 1999 by Gen Pervez Musharraf. He was tried for the offence of hijacking Gen Musharraf’s plane and remained in detention till December 10, 2000, after which he along with his brother and family, except nephew Hamza Shahbaz, was deported to live in exile.