ISLAMABAD, Sept 17: The Election Commission has said the amendment to the Presidential Election Rules, 1988, is not person-specific and will apply to all presidential candidates at the time of scrutiny.

This is the first indication that under the new rule anyone who retired from government service within the last two years will be eligible to contest the presidential election.

In a statement issued here on Monday, Chief Election Commissioner Qazi Mohammad Farooq cited Article 41 (2) of the Constitution which says that “a person shall not be qualified for election as President unless he is a Muslim of not less than forty-five years of age and is qualified to be elected as member of the National Assembly”.

He said that in 2005 a five-member bench of the Supreme Court had held in the Pakistan Lawyers Forum and other cases that the president was only required to be qualified to be a member of parliament as provided under Article 62 and disqualifications containing in Article 63 of the Constitution did not apply to him.

He said the court had followed the dictum laid down by a bench of the apex court in the case of Qazi Hussain Ahmad versus Gen Pervez Musharraf, Chief Executive and others in 2002.

In view of provisions of Article 41 (2) and in the light of the judgments of the court, Rule 5 (3) (a) of the Presidential Election Rules, 1988, was required to be amended so as to exclude the word “or is subject to any disqualification from being elected as, and from being, a member of the National Assembly,” he added.

Rule 5 (3) (a) relates to discretionary summary inquiry to be conducted at the time of scrutiny of nomination papers.

The statement did not say why the rule was amended at a time when the schedule for the presidential polls was about to be announced.

The Election Commission has not clarified whether a person of ‘unsound mind’ or someone who has been convicted by a court and barred from taking part in elections under Article 63 will now be allowed to participate in the presidential polls.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission has again put the rules governing presidential elections on its website. However, the rules have not been updated as there is no mention of the amendment either in the rules or in the notification section of the website.