Pakistan SC rejects petition for Imran Khan's disqualification as PM, says plea filed before election 'rendered ineffective'

Islamabad: Pakistan's Supreme Court on Monday rejected a petition seeking disqualification of Prime Minister Imran Khan for not being truthful and righteous as required under the Constitution.

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Saqib Nisar rejected the petition, filed by barrister Danyal Chaudhry, on the grounds that the plea, filed at a time when Khan had not been elected prime minister, had become infructuous.

File photo of Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan. AP

"The application has already been rendered ineffective," observed Justice Ijazul Ahsan. The petition was filed in May last year after the apex court constituted a six-member Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to probe allegations of corruption against then prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

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Besides other grounds, the petitioner had sought disqualification of Khan for not disclosing his alleged love child Tyrian White in his nomination papers for elections.

The court said that the petition was filed when Khan was an MP in the previous National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, which has already expired, and the petition had become "ineffective". The petitioner had also requested the court to restrain Khan from activities which could influence the JIT members. The JIT report has led to the disqualification of Sharif in July 2017.

Sharif, 68, resigned as Pakistan prime minister last year after the Supreme Court disqualified him from holding public office and ruled that graft cases be filed against the beleaguered leader and his children over the Panama Papers scandal.

The Avenfield case was among the three corruption cases filed against the ex-premier by the National Accountability Bureau on the Supreme Court's orders in the Panama Papers case.