ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has announced its much-awaited verdict, rejecting plea to disqualify Imran Khan and declared  PTI’s key party leader Jahangir Tareen disqualified on the petitions filed by PML-N leader Hanif Abbasi.

Abbasi had filed the petition seeking disqualification of PTI chief and party’s secretary general Tareen for not disclosing their assets and ownership of the offshore companies.

Meanwhile, the apex court has sent the foreign funding case to the Election Commission of Pakistan to consider.

Headed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar a three-judge bench had earlier on November 14 reserved the verdict after hearing arguments of the counsels of the parties concerned.

The bench that also comprised of Justice Umer Ata Bandial and Justice Faisal Arab announced the verdict, deciding the political fate of the PTI chief.

The opposition PTI and the ruling PML-N have been keenly waiting for the judgment for weeks because it has attained immense significance in the backdrop of the disqualification of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif in the Panama Papers case.

Advocate Naeem Bukhari, the counsel for Imran Khan, had said in his concluding arguments that his client’s case was different from that of Panama Papers as there was no question of money going out of the country, but the PTI chief could not manage his accounts properly.

He argued Abbasi alleged in his petition that Khan did not disclose his assets in the nomination papers for the 2002 election, but no one raised any objection in this regard at the time of submission of the papers.

What’s the use of raising this objection after the passage of more than a decade, he asked and added that a returning officer had approved Khan’s nomination papers at that time.

The petitioner’s counsel, on the other hand, contended that the respondent changed his stance on more than 18 occasions and Justice Asif Saeed Khosa had given observation about Nawaz Sharif shifting stance twice in the Panama Papers case and eventually disqualified him.