The full court bench of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) High Court on Tuesday disqualified Prime Minister Sardar Tanveer Ilyas from being a member of the legislative assembly for contempt.
On Monday, the superior courts of AJK had separately served notices Ilyas to explain his position with regard to his “derogatory remarks about the superior judiciary in his speeches at public meetings”.
The notices, served through his principal secretary, asked Ilyas to separately appear before the high court and the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
At a function in Islamabad over the weekend, Ilyas had indirectly blamed the judiciary for affecting the functioning of his government and interfering in the domain of the executive through the grant of stay orders.
He had particularly referred to a $15 million Saudi-funded education sector project, saying it had been in a limbo because the court had issued a stay order on it. Similarly, he had also taken strong exception to the “de-sealing by the courts of tobacco factories involved in tax evasion to the tune of billions of rupees”.
On Tuesday, Justice Chaudhry Khalid Rasheed read out the judgement of the AJK High Court full bench, sentencing the AJK premier till the rising of the court.
