ISLAMABAD, Jan 15: The Supreme Court on Tuesday put off hearing of an election appeal with a direction to the appellant to first get his review petition decided, which had been filed earlier against his conviction for his involvement in the November 28, 1997 apex court rowdyism case.

A three-member bench comprising Justice Mohammad Nawaz Abbasi, Justice Mohammad Qaim Jan Khan and Justice Zawwar Hussain Jaffery was hearing the appeal against the order of the returning officer who had rejected the nomination of the PML-Q ticket holder Mian Mohammad Munir because he had been convicted by the apex court in 2000 under contempt of court with a one-month imprisonment and a fine of Rs5,000.

Even the switching of loyalty to the PML-Q by Mian Munir could not save him as his nomination papers for the upcoming general elections from constituency NA-122 Lahore had been rejected by the returning officer for his conviction under the contempt of court case. He had not been allowed to participate in the 2002 general elections for the same reason.

Advocate Wasim Sajjad, representing Mian Munir, told Dawn that the court had postponed the hearing of the election matter till the time the review petition pending before the Supreme Court had been decided.

In 2000, a five-member Supreme Court bench comprising then Chief Justice Irshad Hassan Khan, Justice Mohammad Bashir Jehangiri, Justice Sheikh Riaz Ahmed, Justice Chaudhry Mohammad Arif and Justice Munir A. Sheikh had found former PML-N member National Assembly Tariq Aziz and Mian Mohammad Munir and ex-MPAs of Punjab Chaudhry Tanvir Ahmed Khan, Akhtar Rasool, Akhtar Mahmood and Sardar Mohammad Naseem Khan besides then president of the Nawaz Sharif Force, Shahbaz Goshi, guilty of contempt of court.

In its verdict, the apex court had stated that the seven contemnors were part of the crowd that had gathered in and around the apex court building in the morning of November 28, 1997, and were involved in acts of rowdyism, including raising slogans and displaying banners against the judiciary with the intention of bringing the authority of the court into disrespect and disturbing the order of decorum of the court.

The contemnors were convicted under Article 204 of the Constitution read with Section 3 and 4 of the Contempt of Court Act 1976.

Earlier all of them had been exonerated by the apex court after months of inquiry into the storming incident but eventually they were convicted on a subsequent petition filed by a private citizen, Shahid Orakzai, by resurrecting the entire case.

Wasim Sajjad pleaded before the bench that his client could not be debarred for life from elections as already seven years had passed and a one-month simple imprisonment had been awarded to him.