Supreme Court of Pakistan
Supreme Court of Pakistan. — Photo by AFP

ISLAMABAD: Adviser to Prime Minister on Interior Rehman Malik failed to produce his British nationality renouncement certificate before the Supreme Court during the hearing of the dual nationality case on Monday, DawnNews reported.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and comprising Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja and Justice Khilji Arif Hussain heard the case pertaining to lawmakers holding dual nationality.

The apex court rejected other documents submitted by Malik’s counsel Anwar Mansur.

Mansur said that his client had renounced British nationality on April 27, 2008 and that renouncement fee had been paid from the account of his wife Saeeda Rehman. He said her name had been misspelt in the document as ‘Saeed Rehman’.

The apex court declared the documents as irrelevant and directed Malik’s counsel to either produce original renouncement certificate or its duplicate.

The petitioner, Advocate Waheed Anjum, had accused that as many as 14 lawmakers belonging to PPP, PML-N and MQM of holding foreign passports despite a clear bar in the Constitution on dual nationality holders from becoming a lawmaker.

Anjum presented the documents pertaining to Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) provincial lawmaker Tariq Alwani’s dual citizenship. He claimed that according to the documents Alwani was an American citizen and the documents had been verified by the office of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) director general.

The hearing was subsequently adjourned to Tuesday.

During the previous hearing held on June 25, the court had suspended the National Assembly membership of PPP politician Zahid Iqbal for allegedly holding dual nationality.

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