LAHORE: The Supreme Court of Pakistan on Saturday allowed the four senators-elect whose notifications were not issued by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for allegedly having dual nationality to take part in the upcoming election for the Senate chairman and deputy chairman.
During the hearing of a suo motu case pertaining to the dual nationality of lawmakers, Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar formed a seven-member larger bench and ordered issue of notifications of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Chaudhry Sarwar and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s Haroon Akhtar, Sadia Abbasi and Nuzhat Sadiq.
When Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar resumed the hearing of the case, PTI’s senator-elect Chaudhry Sarwar told the court that he had renounced his British nationality in 2013. The chief justice asked whether he gave up his British nationality for good or renounced it temporarily, to which Sarwar’s counsel said that under the British law, nationality can be restored any time. Justice Nisar observed that it appeared Ch Sarwar temporarily renounced his British nationality so that he could become a governor and after enjoying the mandates could restore his foreign nationality.
The chief justice remarked that Ch Sarwar must give an undertaking that he would never restore his British nationality. “If you restore your British nationality, then this would call for a disqualification,” he observed.
Justice Ijazul Ahsan, part of the three-member bench hearing the case, asked what would happen to the Senate chairman’s election if the four senators-elect are disqualified. “This is a complicated matter and a larger seven-member bench will have to look into it,” the chief justice replied, while ordering that a larger bench be formed to deal with the case.
Published in Daily Times, March 11th 2018.
