Court orders: Tribunal barred from hearing appeal against CM

The appeals will be transferred to the ECP as Qaim believes presiding officer may be biased.

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) further restrained the election tribunal from pursuing election appeals against the election of Sindh chief minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah.

The CM had gone to court pleading for the transfer of an election appeal, filed by his rival Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Syed Ghous Ali Shah, from the tribunal constituted in Sukkur. He had named the election commission of Pakistan, the election tribunal’s head district and sessions judge (retd) Zaheeruddin Leghari and Ghous Ali Shah cited as respondents.

According to the CM, he contested the general elections on provincial assembly’s seat PS-29 Khairpur on a ticket given by the Pakistan Peoples Party and won. The election commission notified him as a returned candidate from the constituency as he had won the elections the last time. Qaim claimed that Ghous filed a petition only because he was defeated.

According to the PML-N candidate, the CM along with former home minister Manzoor Hussain Wassan and Nawab Ali Wassan, who himself was contesting NA-215, had rigged the elections by pressuring and influencing his voters with the help of  unruly armed men. He pleaded the tribunal disqualify Qaim for having violated the code of conducted announced by the election body for the political parties during the general elections, and order the ECP to de-notify him as a member of the Sindh Assembly.

Qaim’s lawyers - Farooq H. Naek, Malik Naeem Iqbal and Shazia Hanjrah - claimed that the rival candidate instead of accepting defeat had started victimising the petitioner by raising objections to his election.

They also claimed that the retired judge heading the tribunal may be biased. The retired district and sessions judge, Zaheeruddin Leghari, who is heading the tribunal where the petition is pending, is one of the disciples of Pir Sahab Pagara, the head of the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional - an ally of the PML-N in Sindh, they said. “Therefore, the petitioner apprehends that he may not get justice from the said tribunal.”

Qaim’s lawyers filed an application to transfer the proceedings from this tribunal but the plea has yet to be entertained as the office of the chief election commissioner is vacant. “There is a likelihood that in the next week the transfer application of the petitioner may come up for hearing and till then the proceedings before the election tribunal at Sukkur may be stayed,” the court was told.

As the two judges took up the matter, the provincial election commission’s legal officer informed that the election body would take up the petitioner’s plea to transfer the proceedings from the election tribunal on September 3. Thus, the bench adjourned the hearing and further extended a stay against the election tribunal’s proceedings till September 24.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 3^rd, 2013.