PTI asks ECP to withhold Gilani’s notification

The ruling PTI has moved another application in the ECP, asking the polls supervisory body to withhold the notification for the election of opposition joint candidate Yousuf Raza Gilani until it decides a video scandal that involves Gilani’s son Ali Haider.

PTI lawmakers — Farrukh Habib, Kanwal Shauzab and Maleeka Bokhari — on Saturday filed the application that claimed that Gilani’s son Ali Haider Gilani used money to get his father elected to the Senate from the crucial Islamabad seat. The applicants referred to a controversial video in which Ali Haider Gilani could be seen demonstrating to some lawmakers how they could cancel their votes in the Senate election.

On March 2, a day before the Senate election, the media channels started airing the allegedly leaked video of Ali Haider Gilani, who is also a provincial assembly lawmaker Later, Ali admitted that the video was genuine, and said that the MNAs in the video belonged to the PTI. The government immediately cried foul, demanding the ECP to declare Ali ineligible. The PTI lawmakers in their application also referred to an audio tape in which provincial minister Nasir Hussain Shah, who also belongs to the PPP, could be allegedly heard talking about use of money in the Senate polls. The ECP is going to hear the video scandal case on March 11.