LAHORE, Dec 1: PML-N president Shahbaz Sharif sees `orders from the top’ behind the rejection of his nomination papers for National and Punjab Assembly seats. “The returning officer (RO) went against his conscience while disqualifying him from contesting the polls on the orders he received from the top,” the former chief minister told reporters at his Model Town residence here on Saturday.

Asked to explain “the top”, he said he was the one who had recently doffed his uniform and his close allies.

Pointing out various flaws in the RO’s verdict, Shahbaz however said he was not in favour of challenging the verdict in the Lahore High Court (the election tribunal) but had left the final decision on the issue up to the party.

Referring to the three objections the RO made as basis for rejecting his papers, the PML-N chief said a full bench of the LHC had declared in an election petition in 2002 that he was not a defaulter.

He denied that he was an absconder, as alleged in the second objection, in a case of police encounter that took place when he was the chief minister.

“I had come to surrender before the court and not to eat sweets on May 11, 2004, after a court notice had been pasted at the boundary wall of my Lahore residence while I was in exile.”

He claimed that he still had a copy of the arrest warrants served on him by the then Lahore DIG Tariq Saleem Dogar and SSP Aftab Cheema at the Lahore airport.

“The police told me that I was being taken by air to a NAB court in Rawalpindi but they fraudulently deported me to Jeddah,” he said.