MULTAN-The Lahore High Court Multan Bench accepted a petition filed by a PML-N candidate for Chairman District Council Multan office and allowed him to contest the election here on Tuesday.
Dewan Muhammad Abbas Bokhari’s nomination papers had been rejected by a local court a few days back on a petition filed by his rival PTI candidate Umar Farooq.
The political observers saw the disqualification of Dewan Muhammad Abbas Bokhari as a big blow as his disqualification also led to the automatic rejection of papers of his panel’s all four candidates for the offices of vice chairman. The four Vice Chairman candidates of his panel included Malik Zafar Ali Dogar, Wajid Ali Shah, Rana Shahzad Noon and Sarfraz Khore.
Umar Farooq had claimed in his petition before a district and sessions court that Muhammad Abbas Bokhari was elected Chairman from UC-180 but he resigned from his office to contest NA-153 by election. His resign was approved and he got 277 votes on the electoral sign of bucket. The petitioner further stated that Muhammad Abbas Bokhari was not member of district council due to his resignation while membership of the council as Chairman or Vice Chairman was necessary for contesting election to the office of Chairman district Council.
The lawyer of Dewan Muhammad Abbas Bokhari, however, rejected the stance taken by the petitioner Umar Farooq and told the honourable court in his arguments that Dewan Muhammad Abbas Bokhari resigned from District Council membership to contest NA-153 by election but sent his resignation to Assistant Director Local Government instead of Secretary Election Commission due to ambiguity in the law. The lawyer further stated that the resignation was not accepted and Mr Bokhari withdraw it, adding that the appallete authority did not interpret the law properly. He further told the court that since Mr. Bokhari withdrew his resignation, neither did the election commission denotify him nor declared the constituency vacant. Thus he was still member of District Council the voter lists for recent polls for reserved seats contained his name as eligible voter. He prayed before the court to cancel the disqualification decision and allow Mr. Bokhari to contest the election.
The PML-N camp burst into jubilations after the court permission to their candidate to contest the Chairman district council election. The polling will take place on December 22.