KARACHI, Dec 18: A three-member bench of the Sindh High Court on Tuesday issued notices to the Election Commission and other respondents for Wednesday in four petitions challenging decisions of election tribunals in appeals from returning officers.

Petitioners Pir Mazharul Haq (PS-74, Dadu), Abdus Salam Thaheem (PS-83, Shahdadkot) and Saeed Ghani (NA-250, Karachi-South) submitted through Advocates Farooq H. Naek and Adnan Karim that they had been wrongly debarred from the electoral contest due on Jan 8, 2008.

Pir Mazhar said his conviction under the Ehtesab Act in the year 2002 was finally set aside by the Supreme Court on Dec 10 and the tribunal should have taken into consideration the Supreme Court’s verdict. The tribunal relied on his eligibility on the date of filing his nomination papers in the last week of November.

Mr Thaheem said he was not an absconder and was duly qualified to contest the polls. Mr Ghani said that he was prevented from producing his original academic certificates by a theft in his car and the returning officer should not have rejected his papers for non-production of the stolen documents. The theft was part of a conspiracy to keep him out of the contest, he alleged.

All the three rejected candidates sought interim orders allowing them to fight the elections pending the hearing of their petitions. Sardar Wahid Bux Bhaiyo (NA-203, Shikarpur) submitted through Advocate Ali Ahmed Junejo that he was neither a defaulter nor an absconder. He had been acquitted by the trial court and cleared by the creditor bank whose defaulter he was alleged to be. Advocate Junejo produced the acquittal order and the bank’s clearance certificate at the preliminary hearing and requested the bench to allow the petitioner to run as a candidate pending the hearing of his case.

The bench, which consisted of Chief Justice Mohammad Afzal Soomro and Justices Ms Qaiser Iqbal and Mahmood Alam Rizvi, ordered that notices be issued to the respondents for Wednesday in all four petitions. Two SHC election tribunals comprising Justices Nadeem Azhar Siddiqui and Rana M. Shamim and Justices Khwaja Naveed Ahmed and Khalid Ali Z. Qazi decided about 87 appeals against rejection and acceptance of nomination papers from across the province from Dec 8 to Dec 14.