Warraich’s appeal against disqualification dismissed

dailytimes

The Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday upheld the decision of disqualification of Amjad Warraich by Election Tribunal. A three-judge SC bench, comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Jawwad S Khawaja and Justice Azmat Saeed, took up the matter of Warraich’s disqualification for electoral process.

Warraich’s counsel, Ahmed Awais, argued that many of the parliamentarians who contested elections on fake degrees have been elected and now they were the members of parliament. He cited the example of Jamshed Dasti who had a fake degree but was allowed to contest the election and became a parliamentarian. Justice Khawaja remarked that the court would not discuss any such issue which was not before it.

Deputy Attorney General Sajid Ilyas told the bench that Warraich told a lie about his degree while contesting previous elections and “according to the constitution any person who tells a lie is ineligible [to become an MP]”. Justice Khawaja remarked that the federation and provinces were not dispensing their duties in such matters.

“Is it the duty of Supreme Court only and no one else is responsible for this?” he said. Later, the court upheld the decision of disqualification of Warraich by Election Tribunal and dismissed the appeal.

This article originally appeared on dailytimes