Muzaffarabad (Reuters) – Pakistan administered Kashmir’s Prime Minister Sardar Tanveer Ilyas was disqualified from holding any public office for two years by a court on Tuesday in a contempt case, the court order said.
Ilyas, a businessman, comes from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has been locked in political wrangling with the government that succeeded him in Islamabad.
The Kashmir leader was tried over a speech he made last week criticising the courts for what he said was interference in his government’s affairs, a court official told Reuters.
Chief Justice of the Muzaffarabad High Court Sadaqat Hussain Raja, who headed a panel of four judges, said Ilyas was found guilty of the contempt of court charges, and wrote in his order: “He stands disqualified from being elected or chosen or from being a member of the legislative assembly or to hold any public office for two years from today.”
He has the right to appeal to the Supreme Court against the sentence, which his legal team said it would file on Wednesday.
The court showed a video of Ilyas’s speech and asked him to verify whether it was him speaking and whether he wanted to contest the content of the speech, according to a Reuters reporter in the courtroom.
Ilyas did not contest and instead tendered an apology, which the court rejected.
The disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan. Pakistani-administered Kashmir is a semi-autonomous region with its own regional government, but is largely run by the authorities in Islamabad.
