SHC stays tribunal’s orders to recount, verify votes in national and provincial constituencies

The high court has deferred proceedings in the cases to different dates in July.


Our Correspondent June 27, 2014

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) has provided another temporary respite to several politicians facing rigging allegations, including Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah.

The SHC on Wednesday further extended its stay against the proceedings initiated before the Karachi, Sukkur and Hyderabad election tribunals regarding results of the election in various constituencies of the national and provincial assemblies.

A number of election petitions are pending before the SHC, wherein the candidates belonging to different political parties have assailed the orders passed by the election tribunals.

PS-29 and NA-215

One of the petitions is filed by Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leaders, Syed Qaim Ali Shah and Nawab Wassan. Both had obtained a stay from the high court against the order of the tribunal, which had ordered the National Database and Registration Authority to verify thumb impressions of the voters on the ballots polled in the constituencies of PS-29, won by Shah, and NA-215, won by Wassan.

Their victory had been questioned by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N) Ghous Ali Shah, who was a losing candidate on both the seats. As the number of petitions increased, the SHC had formed a larger bench to hear and decide the matter.

After a joint hearing of 13 petitions on May 27, the bench had ruled that its stay orders against the tribunals’ proceedings would be recalled and vacated by June 23, if the Supreme Court did not pass any order regarding the high court’s jurisdictions to entertain pleas against such proceedings.

The bench had ruled this while hearing the petitions that questioned whether an interlocutory order made by the election tribunal could be challenged in a written petition before the high court.

Earlier, the SHC bench, while deciding a similar case, had ruled that a petition against the tribunal’s order under Article 199 of the Constitution was not maintainable before the high court. In other cases, the Supreme Court had granted leave to appeal, but the order is still awaited.

As the stay expired, the lawyers for the petitioners pleaded to the court to extend its stay order. Headed by Justice Munib Akhtar, the bench allowed the request and extended the stay order till July 7.

NA-202

The SHC also granted a stay on Thursday against the rechecking of the invalid votes cast at seven polling stations in NA-202 of Shikarpur. Headed by Justice Irfan Saadat Khan, the bench passed a stay on a petition filed by the PPP’s winning candidate, Aftab Shaban Mirani, from NA-202.

Mirani said that he had won the seat by securing 54,013 votes in the re-polling held at 21 polling stations on May 6, defeating PML-N’s Muhammad Ibrahim Jatoi by 233 votes. Jatoi later approached the election tribunal at Sukkur, alleging the police and the Rangers of deliberately invalidating the votes cast in his favour at seven polling stations by affixing the stamps to the PPP candidate. He had sought rechecking and recounting of the invalid votes.

On June 20, the tribunal ordered the relevant district returning officer to carry out rechecking and recounting within seven days to determine whether the votes were rejected in accordance with Rules 17, 22 and 23 of the Representation of Peoples (Conduct of Election) Rules 1977.

However, the PPP candidate argued that Jatoi had filed a frivolous case before the tribunal and pleaded the court suspend the tribunal’s order of rechecking and recounting.

After the preliminary hearing, the bench granted a temporary stay against the Sukkur tribunal’s order till July 16. It also called for comments from the Sukkur tribunal, Jatoi and others by the next date of hearing.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 27th, 2014.

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