After his elder brother Nawaz Sharif received medical care in the United Kingdom, a lawsuit was filed in a Pakistani court attempting to have Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif disqualified for making a “false promise” to the court.
On Tuesday, the Lahore High Court (LHC) postponed further proceedings indefinitely after noting that this case should have been filed when the previous government failed to make good on Shehbaz Sharif’s pledge.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supreme leader and Shehbaz Sharif’s older brother Nawaz Sharif has been in self-imposed exile in the United Kingdom since November 2019.
Petitioner Azhar Abbas said that in November 2019, Shehbaz Sharif filed a “false affidavit” before a two-judge panel of the LHC, promising that if his brother Nawaz Sharif was permitted to seek medical treatment abroad, his brother will be returned to Pakistan within four weeks.
The petitioner claims that the LHC agreed with Shehbaz Sharif’s affidavit and approved Nawaz Sharif’s four-week trip overseas for medical care. Nawaz Sharif is 73 years old. Shehbaz Sharif returned to Pakistan in January 2019, but Nawaz Sharif had been traveling throughout Europe and the Gulf since November 2019. Furthermore, he said that Nawaz Sharif had faked an illness in order to get legal relief.
In court, the petitioner argued that Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution should be used to disqualify Shehbaz Sharif, who is 71 years old.
The petition for a writ of mandate was challenged by Assistant Attorney General Sheraz Zaka, who argued that the petitioner was not a truly injured party. He said that previous prime minister Nawaz Sharif had been given permission to fly abroad by the then-current federal administration (Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf).
He contended that if the petitioner was offended, he may take his concerns to the proper place. He asked the judge to throw out the petition because it lacked legal merit.
The LHC postponed further proceedings indefinitely.
Three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was serving a seven-year sentence at Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail in November 2019 when he was granted medical leave to travel to London.
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