GUJRAT – A session court has sentenced a former lawmaker to three-year imprisonment after an election tribunal found in 2014 that his educational degree was fake.
Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhary was arrested yesterday and sent to the Mandi Bahauddin district jail after Additional District and Sessions Judge Nisar Ahmed issued the verdict.
The Gujranwala division’s election commission had filed the case against the former lawmaker on the orders of the Supreme Court.
Chaudhary was elected a member of the National Assembly in the 2013 general elections as an independent candidate from NA-108 (Phalia-Mandi Bahauddin). He then joined the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, but his rival, Mumtaz Ahmed Tarrar, a PML-N candidate at the time, challenged his bachelor’s degree and accused him of concealing assets while filing nomination papers.
In March 2014, the Lahore High Court’s election tribunal disqualified Chaudhary and a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court later rejected his plea and declared him disqualified on April 13, 2015.
Ijaz Chaudhary had joined the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) before he was disqualified by the Supreme Court and remains affiliated with the party.
Earlier, he had contested an election for the National Assembly in 2002 on a PML-Quaid ticket and later joined the PML-N in 2008. The party did not give him a ticket for the election so he contested it as an independent candidate.
