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Published 24 Sep, 2018 10:24pm

LHC asks Khawaja Asif to submit reply to petition challenging his victory in NA-73

The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday issued a notice to Khawaja Asif while hearing a petition filed by opposing candidate, PTI leader Usman Dar, challenging Asif's victory in Sialkot's NA-73 constituency in the July 25 general election, DawnNewsTV reported.

The court asked Asif to submit reply to the petition in which Dar has argued that the PML-N leader did not submit a verified affidavit while submitting his nomination papers.

The petitioner also claimed that Asif lied about his asset details in the nomination papers.

Furthermore, the PTI leader has argued that the results of "53 polling stations [in NA-73 constituency] were announced a day after the election, and based on the 1,406 vote margin between the winner and the runner-up candidate, the LHC should render Asif's victory void and order a reelection in the constituency," the petition said.

Earlier in June, the Supreme Court had overturned an April decision of the Islamabad High Court which had disqualified Asif as a member of the parliament for life under Article 62(1)(f) of the Constitution for not disclosing his employment in a UAE-based company as an occupation as well as the monthly salary he was receiving.

It was PTI's Dar who had moved the high court against Asif in 2017.

In his petition, he had argued that Asif did not declare his job in the UAE and his salary in the 2013 nomination papers. Asif, however, had contended before the court that he declared AED50,000 as foreign income in papers.

In a petition filed before the SC, Asif had challenged the IHC's verdict and argued that an inadvertent omission to disclose in his nomination papers, a bank account which represented less than 0.5 per cent of his total assets, particularly when the account lay dormant though it was disclosed in the annual statement of assets and liabilities filed with the Election Commission of Pakistan before the writ was instituted, could not be treated as willful and dishonest concealment.

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