ECP rejects PTI’s contempt claim

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has rejected the PTI’s claim that it is not providing a level playing field to the party in the context of the upcoming general elections and has therefore committed a contempt of the Supreme Court.

The SC on December 22 directed the ECP to address the PTI’s reservations which had complained that its candidates were not being issued nomination papers despite issuance of the election schedule. The PTI later filed a contempt petition in the court, claiming that the ECP had done contempt of court by not implementing the court’s December 22 order.

In its five-page reply, the polls oversight authority stated that it held a meeting with a PTI delegation on December 22 to hear its complaints and later took a number of steps to address its grievances. It said the commission issued instructions to both the Islamabad election commissioner as well as four provincial chief secretaries, inspectors general police and provincial election commissioners, who in turn issued orders to district returning officers (DROs) and returning officers (ROs).

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The reply said between December 22 to January 3, the PTI filed a total of 33 complaints—eight in Islamabad, 16 in Punjab, five in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, four in Sindh and none in Balochistan and the ECP took action on all the complaints.

It said the PTI allegation that it is not provided a level playing field is negated by the statistical data received from the ROs. It said a total of 843 PTI candidates filed nomination papers for the National Assembly and the ROs accepted nomination papers of 598 of them.

“Similarly, the candidates of the PTI submitted 1,777 nomination papers for election to the provincial assemblies, out of which 1,398 have been accepted. “The ratio of the acceptance of the nomination papers of the PTI candidate for election to national and provincial assemblies is 76.18 %,” it said.

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The ECP claimed that the statistical data shows that the PTI candidates as well as their proposers and seconders were provided a level playing field and this data negates the version of the petitioner. It said the aggrieved party has a remedy under Section 63 of the Elections Act, 2017 to file an appeal before an appellate tribunal.

The polls supervisor claimed that petitioner failed to provide any proof that the ECP defied the order of the court dated December 22, 2023 in any manner whatsoever. “The commission has taken all the possible steps to comply with the order of this court dated December 22, 2023.

The commission has already submitted a compliance report on December 26, 2023 therefore no contempt of this court is established.” The ECP requested the SC to dismiss the PTI’s contempt petition while imposing a cost on it.