Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: PML-N leader Hanif Abbasi on Tuesday requested the Supreme Court to fix his petitions for hearing on March 6, whereby he sought disqualification of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan and Secretary General Jahangir Tareen for alleged tax evasion.

He contended that the subject matter of his petitions was a substantial question of general public importance, the resolution of which is nothing short of a fundamental political right of the citizens of Pakistan, who had a democratic and fundamental right that only constitutionally qualified and worthy individuals hold public offices.

He said that controversy involved  in the said constitutional petitions was time sensitive and every second of delay in resolution of these questions at hand only perpetuate the injustice, and breach of the sacrosanct trust placed by the people.

He requested the court to issue suitable directions for hearing of the petitions for March 6 before any available bench.

Abbasi had filed a petition under Article 184 (3) of the constitution making the PTI chairman, Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) chief commissioner as respondents.

He had alleged that Kaptaan had acquired funds from prohibited sources to fund the political activities of the PTI, including mobilisation of party activists to engage in civil disobedience and the destruction of state property.

He added that the skipper while submitting certificates to the ECP from 2011 to 2014 had declared that no funds were obtained from prohibited sources.

He alleged that Kaptaan had willfully concealed incorporation of an offshore company of which he was a beneficial owner, adding that Imran also intentionally concealed investments made in real estate in Islamabad.

Similarly, in another petition against Tareen, Abbasi claimed that Tareen had misguided the ECP and the FBR by concealing details of his offshore company, submitting false declaration of assets of agricultural income while filing tax return in 2010 and nomination paper in 2013.

Abbasi alleged that Tareen fraudulently overstated his agriculture income to the FBR and involved in tax evasion of agricultural income as he had over declared income from agricultural sources which was an attempt to unlawfully evade income tax.

In 2014, a Control of Narcotics Substances court indicted Hanif Abbasi and seven others in the ephedrine case. Abbasi was accused of misappropriating 500kg of the controlled chemical ephedrine, obtained in 2010, and allegedly selling it to narcotics smugglers.

The PML-N government made him the Islamabad-Rawalpindi Mtro Bus chairman after he lost his Rawalpindi seat to Imran Khan in 2013 elections.