Franchise from abroad: Overseas votes swell NA-60 victory margin by 400 votes

PML-N’s Sajjad decides to file case before election tribunal seeking vote recount

The victory margin in NA-60 Rawalpindi-IV increased by nearly 400 votes on Tuesday after the overseas votes were included in the final tally. The announcement came as the losing candidate decided to directly approach the election tribunal for a vote recount.

During Sunday’s by-elections, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) Sheikh Rashid Rafique had secured 44,483 votes.

His opponent, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Sajjad Khan had secured 43,836 votes, hence losing the seat by a narrow gap of 647 votes.

However, with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) allowing overseas Pakistanis to vote in the elections for the first time, it served to only widen the gap rather than tip the scales.

After the ECP piloted the programme last month, as many as 7,419 Pakistanis living abroad had registered to vote. Of these, the ECP said that as many as 6,233 voters had cast their vote in their native constituency during the October 14 by-elections. Of these, 5,117 votes were cast for national assembly seats while 1,116 were cast for provincial assembly seats.

In NA-60, the ECP said that 456 votes were cast by voters registered outside of Pakistan.

Of these, 400 votes were cast in favour of PTI’s Rafique while 54 were cast for PML-N’s Sajjad. Two votes were voided for failing to adhere to the listed voting process.

As a result, Rafique was able to increase his lead by 993 votes.

Sajjad to approach tribunal

Having already rejected the election results, PML-N’s Sajjad announced on Tuesday that after consulting his lawyers, he has decided to file an appeal before the election tribunal for recounting votes and verifying the fingerprints on the counterfoils.

PML-N officials who are aware of the situation have disclosed that Sajjad had held extensive consultations with party leaders and his lawyers over the matter and had decided that there was little use to seek justice from the returning officer of the constituency and that the only recourse was to file a case before the election tribunal for the vote recount.

In this regard, it is believed that Sajjad has handed over all the requisite documents and the Form-45 form the election commission to his legal team for prosecution.

Sajjad had on Monday rejected the election results, claiming that results for 80 per cent of the polling stations from the constituency had shown him to be in the pole position to win the constituency when the Results Transmission System (RTS) of the ECP was allegedly halted to manipulate the result.

The PML-N had lost its other Rawalpindi city seat, NA-63 Rawalpindi-VII, where their candidate Aqeel Malik could only muster 45,490 votes to PTI’s Mansoor Hayat Khan who bagged 71,782 votes. While the PML-N lost NA-60 and NA-63, the party had won NA-56 Attock-II with their candidate Sohail Khan securing 128,499 votes to the 86,906 votes secured by his opponent PTI‘s Khurram Ali Khan. 

Published in The Express Tribune, October 17^th, 2018.