By Xinhua,
Islamabad : A full bench of the Lahore High Court Monday disqualified former Pakistani prime minister and leader of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Nawaz Sharif from contesting by-elections, Dawn News TV channel reported.
Sharif was barred from elections on pleas from rivals that he was convicted in 1999 in a case of attempted kidnapping and tax evasion in the aftermath of the coup, in which the then army chief Pervez Musharraf seized power.
The three-judge bench, however, has conditionally allowed chief of PML-N and younger brother of Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif to hold office as the chief minister of Punjab.
“We do not accept the verdict. It is a political decision … We reject the verdict and view it as a conspiracy,” PML-N spokesman Siddiqul Farooq said.
Farooq added that legal experts of the party would soon chalk out its future strategy.