Pakistan’s Supreme Court today sentenced a senior leader of the jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N party for contempt of court, disqualifying him from holding public office for five years, months after he made anti-judiciary remarks.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court had initiated contempt proceedings against the fire-brand Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Tallal Chaudhry for his “derogatory and contemptuous speeches\/statements” against the judiciary during a rally in January.<\/p>\n
A three-judge bench, headed by Justice Gulzar Ahmad, sentenced Chaudhry till the rising of the court and also imposed a fine of Rs 100,000.<\/p>\n
The apex court found the former state interior minister guilty of violating Article 204 of the Constitution, Dawn newspaper reported.<\/p>\n
As a result of his conviction, Chaudhry is ineligible to contest elections for the next five years, it said.<\/p>\n
Chaudhry was ordered by the apex court to ensure his presence during today’s proceedings, which were based on a suo motu notice on his ‘anti-judiciary’ speech during a party rally in Jaranwala in January this year.<\/p>\n
Chaudhry had contested the July 25 general election from NA-102 (Faisalabad-II) but lost to Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s Nawab Shair by nearly 12,000 votes.<\/p>\n
During his speech at a PML-N rally, Chaudhry had demanded removing the judges of the apex court, alleging, “they will not give justice but will continue their injustices.”<\/p>\n
On February 1, Chief Justice of Pakistan Saqib Nisar had taken suo motu notice of “contemptuous speeches”, and on February 6, the top court issued Chaudhry a show-cause notice, ordering him to file his response.<\/p>\n
On July 11, the apex court, after hearing Chaudhry’s arguments, had reserved its judgement, which it delivered today.<\/p>\n
While speaking to the media outside the Supreme Court today, Chaudhry said, “I accept this verdict if it increases the court’s standing.”<\/p>\n
He also vowed to file a review petition against the verdict.<\/p>\n
He also claimed that the contempt case had negatively impacted his poll performance.<\/p>\n
He said the people in his district “had difficulties making a decision”, and that his opponents had taken advantage of the opportunity by campaigning on his expected disqualification.<\/p>\n
“If this decision had been made earlier, then my party would have had a chance to select another candidate who didn’t have this kind of hanging sword over his head. The results could have been even better,” he claimed.<\/p>\n
Chaudhry’s conviction follows those of other PML-N leaders who, in their defence of party supremo and deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif, made derogatory remarks against state institutions.<\/p>\n
Sharif was sentenced to 10 years in jail in a corruption case last month by an anti-graft court.<\/p>\n
In June this year, the top court, on a similar case, sentenced former federal privatisation minister and PML-N leader Daniyal Aziz for contempt “till rising of the court”.<\/p>\n
The contempt judgement also led to similar automatic disqualification from Parliament for five years and restrained Aziz from contesting the July 25 election.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court had sentenced then-PML-N Senator Nehal Hashmi to jail on contempt charges over his controversial remarks against the judiciary.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pakistan’s Supreme Court today sentenced a senior leader of the jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N party for contempt of court, disqualifying him from holding public office for five years, months after he made anti-judiciary remarks. The Supreme Court had initiated contempt proceedings against the fire-brand Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Tallal Chaudhry for his “derogatory and contemptuous speeches\/statements” against the judiciary during a rally in January. A three-judge bench, headed by Justice Gulzar Ahmad, sentenced Chaudhry till the rising of the court and also imposed a fine of Rs…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16264"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16267,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16264\/revisions\/16267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}