Daily Times

Istehkam-e-Pakistan Party (IPP) leader Ishaq Khakwani has claimed that former prime minister Imran Khan conspired with ex-chief justice Saqib Nisar to disqualify Jahangir Khan Tareen, the newly-formed party’s patron.

In a statement, Khakwani, the newly-formed IPP’s spokesperson, said that it is not being discussed as to how the PTI chief moved against Tareen, who was disqualified for life in December 2017. Believed to be inclined towards the PTI, Nisar retired as chief justice of Pakistan in 2019. “Can PTI chairman deny that there was no help from former chief justice [Nisar]?” asked Khakwani. He slammed Khan for claiming high moral grounds and not speaking the truth while he was involved in this. “PTI chairman will have to answer for his conspiratorial role in the disqualification of Jahangir Tareen,” he said. Tareen parted ways with the PTI after he developed differences with the party chairman and was instrumental in Punjab politics, helping the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz install Hamza Shehbaz as the chief minister of the country’s most populous province. However, Hamza was later removed from office and replaced by PTI-backed Parvez Elahi.

Tareen’s disqualification

On December 15, 2017, a three-member bench of the apex court led by the then-chief justice Mian Saqib Nisar disqualified Tareen for a lifetime for being “dishonest” to the court. Tareen, a former federal minister, and a former close aide of Khan, was declared disqualified under article 62 of the Constitution – the same clause under which the three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif was disqualified – in the whistleblower Panama Papers case in July this year.

Tareen was also found guilty of concealing a London-based offshore company. Hanif Abbasi, a parliamentarian and leader of the PML-N had filed a petition in November 2016, accusing the PTI leaders of money laundering, tax evasion, fake money trials and not declaring their assets to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). Abbasi also accused the opposition party of being a “foreign-funded” party. The judges dismissed all the allegations relating to money laundering, tax evasion and fake money trails. However, they ordered the election commission to investigate the foreign funding allegations against the PTI.