The government presiding officer said Shahbaz Sharif's bid for candidacy had been turned down after other candidates objected that he was unable to run for office, citing pending charges of murder and default on a bank loan.
Shahbaz with his brother and their industrialist family was sent into exile in 2000, one year after General Pervez Musharraf ousted then-premier Nawaz Sharif from power in a bloodless coup.
Government sources said Shahbaz faces criminal charges in an anti-terrorism court for ordering the killing of five people during his 1997-99 tenure as chief minister in Punjab province. According to prosecutors, police in 1998 killed five students from an Islamic school, or madrassa, on the orders of Shahbaz, who suspected them to be involved in acts of terrorism.
The rejection of Shahbaz's candidacy came two days after his party along with other parties in the broad-based opposition alliance, the All Parties Democratic Movement, said they would boycott the January 8 general elections.
OUR REPORTER ADDS: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz President Shahbaz Sharif on Saturday said that the decision by returning officer rejecting his nomination papers filed for NA-119 and PP-141 and 142 was politically motivated showing that the upcoming general elections were a sheer farce and fraud.
He told reporters that a rigging plan had already been chalked out which would be of the worst type. He said that in his personal capacity he disliked filing any appeal against the decision by the returning officer, but his party would decide on it.
Shabaz Sharif further said the returning officer had rejected his nomination papers on the ground of being a defaulter and absconder in the Sabzazar case. He defended himself by saying that he was never a defaulter, and that the Lahore High Court had decided in his favour in 2002.
"As far as the Sabzazar case is concerned, an FIR was registered against me and nobody could be ousted from polls because of merely an FIR registration," Shabaz said.
He said he was never an absconder because he arrived in Pakistan on May 11, 2004 to appear before the trial court, but police took him into custody and wrongly sent him to Jeddah. He said this case was totally baseless and all the other so-called co-accused were either on bail or released.
He said that during the past five years loans worth Rs 58 billion were written off, but the Sharif family paid defaulted amount of the Ittefaq Foundry, which was nationalised in 1972 and returned to the family on June 16, 1979, with a heavy default. The Ittefaq Foundry had not taken even a single penny as compensation despite loss inflicted on the foundry by the authorities between 1988 and 1990 and then between 1993 and 1996.
When asked what would happen if he was ousted from election process, he said there were several capable and intelligent leaders in the party willing to lead it. He said that party workers were against boycotting the elections despite the fact that he tried his best to convince them about the polls boycott. He said if there was a partial boycott of the polls, desired results could not be achieved.