LAHORE, Nov 19: The Lahore High Court on Monday issued notices to the Election Commission and PML-N MPA Shamsa Gohar on a petition seeking disqualification of the lady parliamentarian by her husband.

Justice Khwaja Imtiaz Ahmad heard arguments of the petitioner’s counsel at length and issued notices to the respondents for next week.

Gohar Sarfraz Qureshi filed the petition and contended that Shamsa had concealed facts on the occasion of her marriage with him. He said Shamsa contracted marriage with him in 2006 and showed her unmarried in the nikahnama (marriage certificate). He said after some time he came to know that she was already married to Abid Ali.

The petitioner said Shamsa had contracted marriage with Ali on March 27, 2005, and concealed this fact at the time of nikah with him (Qureshi) solemnised on April 9, 2006. He also claimed that any proof of Shamsa’s divorce with Ali was not found in the record of the union council concerned.

He further accused his wife of receiving millions of rupees from the national exchequer under the head of TA/DA to attend Punjab Assembly sessions.  He said Shamsa, belonged to Sialkot, but she had been settled in Lahore for the last four years. He prayed to the court to invoke the provisions of articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution and declare the MPA disqualified being a dishonest person.

visa firm: Three more petitions have been filed in the Lahore High Court seeking action against a visa consultancy firm’s owner. Petitioners Shahnawaz and others pleaded that they had given millions of rupees to Asim Malik, owner of Future Concern, for going abroad. They said the firm’s owner neither sent them abroad nor returned their money.

The petitioners prayed to the court to order the Federal Investigation Agency to register case against Malik and get their hard-earned money recovered.

Dozens of identical petitions are already pending adjudication in the LHC and the FIA registered cases against the accused.