Senior leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Shah Mahmood Qureshi, was granted permission to run in the next general elections on February 8 after his nomination papers were approved on Friday.
Following an appeals hearing against the returning officers’ (ROs’) acceptance or rejection of nomination submissions in the run-up to the polls, Qureshi’s papers were accepted by the Election Appellate Tribunal.
The PTI politician’s nomination papers for the NA-214 seat in Umarkot city, Sindh, were accepted by the tribunal. Zain Qureshi, his son, was also granted permission to run in the same seat.
In the meantime, Omar Ayub Khan, the leader of the PTI, lost his appeal in Abbottabad against the rejection of his NA-18 nomination papers.
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He is, nevertheless, permitted to run in the NA-18 Haripur polls.
Babar Nawaz of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) was also permitted by the tribunal to run for the NA-18 seat.
Following the withdrawal of their objections against one another, Ayub and Nawaz’s papers were accepted.
Haleem Adil Sheikh, the leader of the PTI in Sindh, has also been given the go-ahead to run from NA-238. Following the tribunal’s consideration of his appeal, the papers of another PTI candidate, Arsalan Khalid, were also accepted from NA-241.
Because of his dual citizenship, Mirza Ikhtiar Baig, the candidate for the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), has been given conditional permission to run in the election from the NA-241 constituency.
Baig was instructed to provide an affidavit by Tribunal Judge Adnan Al-Karim Memon if he had given up his dual citizenship.
A day prior, a number of prominent political figures, such Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Akhtar Mengal, and Firdous Shamim Naqvi, among others, obtained redress from electoral tribunals upon the acceptance of their nomination papers to participate in next elections.
On Thursday, various election tribunals approved the nomination papers of PML-Zia chief Ijazul Haq, head of the Awami Muslim League (AML), and head of the Balochistan National Party (BNP), Mengal. The hearing of objections filed against the rejection or acceptance of nomination papers by the election tribunals and courts of law continued.
