Islamabad, May 11 (IANS): The Pakistan election tribunal's May 5 verdict over the disqualification of federal minister Khawaja Saad Rafique was suspended by the country's apex court on Monday.

A three-member bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, issued the order on appeal from the minister who was declared victorious during the 2013 general elections from the National Assembly-125 constituency.

In his plea, Rafique contended that the election tribunal's decision did not explicitly state that he was involved in rigging.

The apex court subsequently suspended the tribunal's decision for re-election in the constituency and accepted Rafique's petition for hearing, Dawn reported.

The court summoned all election records from the tribunal and adjourned the hearing for four weeks.

On May 5, an election tribunal ordered re-election in Lahore's National Assembly (NA)-125 and Punjab Province (PP)-155 constituencies after irregularities in voting during the 2013 general elections were proved.

The one-page statement released by the tribunal had said that the ballot bags had been opened with a sharp object and the records had been tampered with.

Rafique and Mian Naseer Ahmad, both of whom belonged to Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), had won the 2013 general elections from Lahore's NA-125 and PP-155 constituencies respectively.

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf's (PTI) Hamid Khan had challenged Rafique's victory, alleging that the PML-N candidate had rigged the elections, and a large number of bogus votes were cast in his favour.

The tribunal's ruling came months after PTI's sit-ins in Islamabad over alleged mass-scale rigging in the 2013 elections.

NA-125 is among the four controversial constituencies -- the other three being NA-110 (Sialkot), NA-122 (Lahore) and NA-154 (Lodhran) -- where the PTI had demanded for voters' thumb print-verification in the hope of finding a solution that might be acceptable to all concerned.