ISLAMABAD: The Isla­mabad High Court (IHC) on Thursday dismissed a petition seeking disqualification of former prime minister Imran Khan for not ‘revealing’ that he had allegedly fathered an “illegitimate daughter”.

The court also issued detailed verdicts on petitions seeking disqualification of former president Asif Ali Zardari and former federal minister Fawad Chaudhry, observing that such matters were “a waste of litigants’ time and diminish public confidence in their elected representatives”.

In its observations on the petition against Imran Khan, an IHC division bench said the allegation that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman “concealed his daughter” was a matter of “private life”.

The bench comprised outgoing Chief Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb. “Moreover, the rights of a child, named in the petition, are also involved. Her rights may irretrievably be harmed if this court undertakes the probe,” observed the court.

“The likely consequences relating to the rights of the child are a sufficient ground for refusing to exercise the extraordinary jurisdiction vested in this court under Article 199 of the Constitution.

“We feel that it is not in public interest to entertain the petition in hand, let alone ordering investigations related to the private life of the respondent” [Imran Khan],” the bench opined.

It concluded that entertaining such petitions would lead to prejudicing the rights of litigants since the courts were already facing a backlog.

‘Sadiq’ and ‘Ameen’

In his judgement on the petition seeking disqualification of Asif Zardari and Fawad Chaudhry, Justice Minallah held that any error in an elected representative’s disqualification judgement caused irreparable harm.

The judge observed that the standard of ‘Sadiq’ and ‘Ameen’ did not exist for any office-holder other than elected representatives.

This standard did not exist even for “unelected individuals” who have ruled the country for over half of its existence, the judge added.

Justice Minallah said the effects of disqualification under Article 62 (1)(f) were profound. “Parlia­m­e­­nt could create its own me­­chanism for accountability of parliamentarians.” He was of the view that investigations against elected representative damaged their reputation even if they were declared innocent later. “It benefits their political rivals.”

Justice Minallah held that voters should be empowered to decide who will represent them and their votes should be taken as a yardstick for judging an individual’s honesty and sagacity. The outgoing IHC chief justice stated that a parliamentarian who had secured 200,000 votes should not be disqualified by an unelected judge.

“In the public interest, courts should not be inv­olved in cases of disqualification of elected representatives,” he added.

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2022