The future of four parliamentarians of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), including a federal minister, will be decided by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) in coming days, as their qualification as lawmakers have been challenged in the court. The lawmakers are: Maleeka Ali Bokhari, Tashfeen Safdar, Kanwal Shauzab and Minister for Religious Affairs Noorul Haq Qadri. The disqualification of these prominent leaders was sought in four different petitions filed on different dates. A couple of days ago, Qadri’s qualification was challenged in the IHC by Hazrat Hussain and Shah Nawaz Khan, residents of Jamrud tehsil of Khyber district. In the plea, the petitioners challenged the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) decision that it had issued in March. In the decision, the ECP rejected the plea that sought Qadri’s disqualification on the same grounds given in the current petition. The petitioners said that the integrity of public office holders should be above board; they should have neither plundered public money, nor defaulted on government dues. The petition stated that Qadri, while filling his nomination forms in June last year for the general election, mentioned wrongly that he owned 500 kanals of land in formerly Khyber Agency. It further stated that as per the documents, on the day of filing of nomination forms, respondent No 2 (Qadri) was the owner of or had interests in the business called ‘Gillani Marble Factory’. It said his assets forms also showed several businesses in the name and style of ‘Gillani’, and added that the bill for the electricity used by the marble factory owned by Qadri were not paid for at least three months, and the arrears soared to Rs 613,021 by March 2013. “This was an admitted fact that the electricity bill for the month of March 2013 was in the name of respondent No. 2,” reads the petition. Besides this, the petitioners gave some other justifications and requested the court to declare Qadri ineligible. Similarly, eligibility of three other members of National Assembly (MNAs) – Maleeka Ali Bokhari, Tashfeen Safdar and Kanwal Shauzab – was also questioned in the high court. After initial hearing, the IHC served notices to NA Speaker Asad Qaiser and the respondents. Two citizens, Abdullah Khan and Chaudhry Mehmood Ali Hashim, through their counsel Ahmad Raza Qasuri advocate, had filed the petition against the lawmakers and pleaded that they did not meet the criteria to hold membership of parliament under articles 62 and 63 of the constitution, as they hid information in their nomination papers. Justice Aamer Farooq took up the case for hearing and served notices to the NA speaker, ECP, respondents (MNAs) and others, and directed them to submit immediate response over the matter. The petitioners had claimed in their plea that MNA Maleeka Bokhari was not eligible to participate in the general election as she was holding dual nationality at the time of submission of her nomination papers. She submitted her nomination papers on June 10, 2018, and relinquished her British nationality on June 11. The petitioners also alleged that MNA Tashfeen Safdar hid the information related to her dual nationality in her nomination papers. They claimed that the MNA had relinquished her other nationality in 2013, and in an affidavit she said she neither held any dual nationality, nor had applied for it. The petition said MNA Kanwal Shauzab had given wrong information in her documents regarding shifting her vote to Rawalpindi from Islamabad.