PHOTO: APP/FILE
A petition in this regard has been filed by the Pakistan Tehreek—e-Insaf (PTI) candidate Abidur Rehman in the Islamabad High Court on Wednesday.
Rehman, who had lost out to Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) candidate Muhammad Shoaib, contended that on election day, there were large-scale complaints regarding a shortage of form-45 in the constituency.
The candidate argued that neither he nor his polling agents were provided with the form.
Furthermore, he claimed that two days before the elections, his rally was set upon by some “miscreants carrying black flags and chanting slogans of election boycott”.
“[The miscreants] pelted stones on them [rally participants], damaging their vehicles and causing injuries,” he said, adding that the “miscreants also tried to enter into the premises of corner meeting of the petitioner.”
Rehman contended that the miscreants harassed and threatened residents. This disturbance, he argued, led to a lower turnout in the Frontier Region Kohat and FR Peshawar.
“The people of those areas were disenfranchised from their right to vote as conferred upon them by the Constitution,” the PTI candidate said, adding that the matter was reported to the Chief Election Commissioner the same day and the next day — the penultimate day before the election.
On election day, Rehman said that per the situation conveyed by his polling agents, he was leading by some 3,000 votes.
“However, a provisional result was withheld by the returning officer until 11am on the following day despite the fact that result of all the remaining constituencies had already been declared,” he contended.
Rehman claimed that Leader of the Opposition in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Assembly Akram Khan Durrani and JUI-F MNA Mufti Shakoor “continuously influenced the election process even before and on day of polls”.
Rehman stated that as per the election law, he had submitted applications to the returning officer (RO) and the district RO seeking a recount.
“However, the application was not acceded to,” Rehman said, adding that this forced him to file an application with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).
He also filed an application for re-polling in FR Kohat and FR Peshawar because “people of those areas were not allowed to cast their votes on account of continuous threats and harassment resulting in extremely low turnout.”
The PTI candidate, though, conceded that the re-counting application was partly allowed and votes case in 16 polling stations were counted again instead of the entire constituency.
He said that the result was “unnecessarily and unlawfully held by the DRO and the RO until the next day," when through incorrect and fake counting, the success of the petitioner was converted into defeat by a narrow margin of 74 votes.
He further argued that the margin of victory was less than five per cent of the votes polled in the constituency while some 893 votes were “unlawfully” rejected.
He urged the court to order a recount in the constituency and to re-poll in two parts of the constituency.
The JUI-F candidate had bagged 18,102 votes as against 18,028 votes secured by the PTI candidate.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 25th, 2019.
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