Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Following an amended law, a Pakistani court’s fresh ruling has eased the way for former Prime Minister Mohammed Nawaz Sharif’s return from self-exile and to lead his political outfit Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in the General Elections to the National Assembly due later this year.
The PML-N said its supremo will return to Pakistan after the date of the election is announced. Polls in the broke South Asian country are due in October as the incumbent government’s tenure ends on August 13.
On Saturday last week, a Pakistani accountability court acquitted the 73-year-old three-time PM, living in London in self-exile, in a 37-year-old case that stated that he transferred a “precious state-owned land” in Lahore to a leading media baron as a “bribe.”
This NAB ruling came days after Nawaz’s younger brother and Prime Minister Shehbaz Shari’s federal government amended laws to lift the life-long ban on politicians.
The former PM, who has been indirectly running Islamabad after the ouster of his predecessor Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi in April 2022, may now contest and lead PML-N in the coming polls.
While Nawaz’s younger brother is the current PM, his daughter Maryam Nawaz is the most powerful minister in the Shehbaz cabinet and his close relative Ishaq Dar is Pakistan’s Finance Minister.
The Supreme Court had disqualified Nawaz Sharif in 2017. The next year, the apex court ruling in the Panama Papers case made him ineligible to hold public office for life, the media reported.
“An Accountability Court in Lahore acquitted three-time premier Nawaz Sharif in a case related to illegal transfer of 54-kanal (6.75 acres) precious state land to Jang/Geo media group owner Mir Shakil-ur-Rehman in Lahore while he was the chief minister of Punjab 37 years ago,” the media reported.
‘Judge Rao Abdul Jabbar acquitted him after the country’s anti-graft body (National Accountability Bureau) informed the court that after recent amendments to its law (by the Shehbaz Sharif-led coalition government), the case does not fall in its preview.”
The former PM’s lawyers contended that NAB had malicious intentions while filing the case against his client, who was not involved in land allotment.
The court had already acquitted Shakil-ur-Rehman in this case.
Nawaz’s counsel said the acquittal of the principal accused proved that no offense was committed.
Therefore, he argued that keeping the proceedings pending against any other accused, including a proclaimed offender, after the acquittal of the prime accused was of no use.
The judge admitted the arguments of the counsel and acquitted Nawaz Sharif in the case.
NAB’s earlier charge sheet accused Nawaz Sharif, who was also the chairman of Lahore Development (LDA) in 1986, of misusing his authority and providing undue benefit to Rehman by approving the exemption of 54 precious plots measuring one kanal each in a single block (compact form) situated at canal bank H- Block of M. A. Jauhar Town, Lahore.
NAB alleged the accused caused a loss of Rs 143 million to the national exchequer through the allotment of the land.
Nawaz Sharif, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo, has been living in self-exile in the United Kingdom since November 2019.
Before his departure to London on a four-week bail granted by the Lahore High Court on medical grounds, Sharif was serving a seven-year jail term in the Al-Azizia Mills corruption case.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief and ousted PM Imran Khan alleged that former Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa had maneuvered Sharif’s ouster from jail and later struck a deal with him.