SWABI, Sept 21: The fake certificate case against district Nazim Sher Zaman Sher remained undecided on Friday as the defendant’s counsel told the single bench of Swabi Election Tribunal that his client had been admitted to a hospital and could not attend the court proceedings.

A district councillor, Jehanzeb Khan, had filed a writ petition in the tribunal against the district Nazim, seeking his disqualification from contesting the polls on the grounds that he had submitted a fake matriculation certificate with his documents.

Judge Hayat Ali Shah told the counsel of the respondent on Sept 5 that the election tribunal would have to decide the petition before Sept 12, of the current month as directed by an EC member on Aug 8, 2002.

The district Nazim has already disowned the certificate, saying that his opponents wanted to defame him through the petition as he had passed his matriculation from Afghanistan. The petitioner told newsmen that a representative of the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, Peshawar, had declared the certificate as fake.