Overturning a decision by the Lahore High Court here on Thursday, the First Bench of the Supreme Court has allowed the retired three-star general, Abdul Majid Malik to contest Chakwal District Nazim's election, scheduled for October 6.
Headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the First Bench ruled on an appeal of Malik who was also a federal minister in the government of ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Other two members of the Bench were Justice M Javed Buttar and Justice Jamshed Ali.
The Court also directed the Election Commission to allot an election symbol to Majid Malik and put his name on the ballot paper for election of Chakwal Nazim.
In a short judgement, the Chief Justice said that, if after the election, anyone desired to raise objections to the High School-leaving certificate of the former general, field would be open for him to knock at the doors of the Election Tribunal.
Majid Malik was represented by Abdul Hafeez Pirzada and Syed Iftikhar Hussain Gilani, who traced the brief history of the case, saying that while the Returning Officer had not found any fault in the Matriculation certificate of the candidate, the District Returning Officer rejected it terming it as not genuine.
Gilani said there could not be a "bigger joke" than to dub the educational certificate of a retired General as "fake" in order to oust him from the contest. The Lahore High Court, he said, had looked with suspicion at a document that the issuing authority, the Punjab University, had endorsed.
A high school certificate is the minimum qualification prescribed for the office of a District Nazim.
Hafeez Pirzada contended that the name of Majid Malik was correctly registered in the official gazette and the University has accepted that the former minister had appeared in the High School-leaving examination and passed it in 1939. His roll number was 487.
Agreeing with the Counsel, the Chief Justice said the official gazette had a legal status and was accepted by the Pakistan Army as announced by the Inter Service Public Relations Directorate.
Commenting on the observations of appellant counsel, Iftikhar Gilani said that objection had also been raised at the absence of the name of his client in the official gazette and asked whether more than one candidate could hold the same name, date of birth and also the roll number.
The Chief Justice said that if the papers were rejected on the ground that the gazette did not have the name of Malik's father than the University should cancel all such certificates where such omissions could be found.
The Court declined to hear Punjab Advocate General Aftab Iqbal Chaudhry, saying that he could not represent the Election Commission and also that the Court had not put him under notice.
Aftab Chaudhry had raised an objection to the spellings of the name of the retired general that he said read as Majid and not Majeed, which was his actual name.
The Chief Justice did not find any fault with the spellings and told the Advocate General not to get involved in the English spellings of an Urdu name that could be written with "e" or "I". He then sent for the Attorney General Makhdoom Ali Khan for assistance from his office.
On arrival, Khan said that the decision of the LHC's single bench was against the law as the case should have gone before the election tribunal for decision.
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