LAHORE, Feb 16: An election tribunal of the Lahore High Court on Monday unseated a PML-N's MPA from Lahore, Sheikh Amjad Aziz, and declared PML-Q's Haroon Akhtar Khan elected to the Punjab Assembly in his place.

Justice Mian Hamid Farooq said in the judgment announced on Monday that all the findings rendered and evidence given on the election of Sheikh Amjad Aziz from PP-156 to the Punjab Assembly had established that he did not possess necessary qualification to contest.

Haroon Akhtar Khan, the brother of Federal Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan, had accused his rival of presenting a bogus BSc degree to the returning officer at the time of October 2002 elections.

The tribunal set aside the Oct 20, 2002, notification of the Election Commission of Pakistan according to which the PML-N candidate was elected. Justice Farooq declared Haroon Akhtar Khan having validly been returned from the Lahore constituency.

The tribunal, however, declined the request of Mr Haroon that a fraud case against Sheikh Amjad be registered for submitting fake documents of his qualification to the returning officer.

Sheikh Amjad had submitted that he passed the BSc examination conducted by the Punjab University in 1989. However, the university did not issue him a degree and, on his request, sent him a 'pass result intimation' for the purpose of elections.

He submitted that the returning officer accepted the university document with the nomination papers and declared him a candidate. The PML-N candidate stated that Mr Haroon neither raised any objection to his candidature at the time of election nor had he approached an appropriate judicial forum to challenge his degree and candidature. As such, Mr Haroon had not exhausted any opportunity to seek redressal of his grievance.

Mr Haroon's counsel Ejaz Ahmad Awan submitted that not only Sheikh Amjad did not possess a graduation degree, the 'pass result examination' slip, claimed to have been issued by the Punjab University, was also a fake because this too was also not produced in original but a photo copy.

The university's officials, who were summoned by the tribunal, did not recognize their signatures on the slip. This meant that the slip was also a fake. The PML-N candidate could not present his degree during the process of the petition although the tribunal's presiding officer time and again asked him to do so.

Sheikh Amjad also failed to present in the court the registration number issued by the Punjab University. Such a document was important and was a solid evidence of a student on the rolls of the university.

According to the counsel, the PML-N candidate passed his secondary school certificate examination in 1982. Sheikh Amjad could only prove that he had also passed C Com and D Com courses.