Pakistan bars Sharif from contesting polls

After going on an overdrive to scuttle his attempts to end his exile, Pakistan government has barred former premier Nawaz Sharif from contesting elections saying he has already been convicted and sentenced in a case, but put the corruption cases against him in the cold storage.

The deposed prime minister was sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of preventing the plane of General Pervez Musharraf from landing in October 1999, Advocate General Mallik Qayyum said.

Therefore, Sharif, the leader of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, is not eligible to participate in the general elections scheduled to take place towards the end of this year, he was quoted in the local media as saying.

Qayyum's comments came three days after the deportation of Sharif to Jeddah on Monday following his arrival in Islamabad from London to end his seven-year exile.

His return was reduced to a stopover only as within hours he was packed off to Jeddah, where he is expected to remain for another three years amid claims by the government that he had agreed to stay out of the country for a decade.

The government has also put corruption cases against Sharif in cold storage as authorities informed an anti-corruption court in Rawalpindi that the cases, which it tried to reopen before Sharif's arrival in Islamabad, need not be pursued because he was no longer in the country.

In another development, the Supreme Court has not yet given a date for hearing the two petitions filed by Sharif's family questioning his deportation.

One of the petitions also seeks his recall from Jeddah.

Meanwhile, Sharif's brother Shahbaz, who had initially announced that he too would return home on September 10, but changed his plans in the last minute, has decided to take disciplinary action against local party leaders blaming them for not mobilising supporters to give a warm welcome to the former premier on his arrival.

While the government took into preventive custody hundreds of PML-N leaders and activists ahead of Sharif's arrival, the party leadership was upset that not a single supporter could manage to reach the airport.

The PML-N's plans to welcome Sharif were backed by the All Party Democratic Movement comprising Islamic alliance Muttahida Majlis-e Amal and cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan's party Tehrik-e Insaaf.

None of the allied parties' cadre too could manage to break the police cordon to reach the Islamabad airport.

Shahbaz, PML-N president, was critical of the "lacklustre" performance while addressing a meeting of the party headed by chairman Raja Zafarul Haq over phone on Wednesday.

Shahbaz expressed displeasure over the poor arrangements made by the local leadership and was also upset over media reports that no PML-N worker made any serious attempt to reach the Islamabad airport on September 10, Dawn reported.

He was also angry over reports that most PML-N leaders were arrested while resting in their homes and none of them could even cross the Zero Point in Islamabad, which is about 15 km from the airport.

Haq also admitted that the party had failed and it needed to introspect on the failure.

Imran Khan accused the PML-N of not coordinating well with the APDM parties to break the police cordon and said the party should have foreseen the government's strategy to prevent supporters from going to the airport.