This seat was won by Aftab Shaban Mirani of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). Mirani had gone to court and challenged the tribunal’s order by submitting that he had won the seat by securing 54,013 votes in the re-polling held at 21 polling stations on May 6, defeating Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz’s Muhammad Ibrahim Jatoi by 233 votes.
Jatoi approached the election tribunal in Sukkur and claimed that the police and the Rangers deliberately invalidated 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.
Granting a stay against the rechecking of the invalid votes, the bench had also called comments from the election commission of Pakistan. However, no such comments were filed by Wednesday, when the matter was again taken up. Headed by Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, the bench extended earlier stay order till July 23 and repeated direction to the ECP to file its comments.
Mukesh Chawla’s disqualification
Another bench, headed by Justice Muniab Akhtar, questioned the maintainability of a petition seeking disqualification of Mukesh Chawla, who is elected MPA on the Sindh assembly’s seat reserved for minorities.
The petitioners - Muhammad Sulaman, Abdul Qayyum Solangi and Sher Muhammad Sheikh - had sought Chawla’s disqualification under Section 62 and 63 of the Representation of Peoples Act 1976 for submitting the fake bachelors and masters’ degrees with his nomination papers. According to them, PPP candidate had used a Bachelor’s degree belonging to another student, Mukesh Bansari, and later changed his father’s name and date of birth.
The bench questioned how the petitioners are entitled to file the case as they are not the voters from the constituency. Without passing an order to issue notices, the judges directed their lawyer, Abdul Salam, to first make arguments on the question of maintainability on August 11.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 11th, 2014.
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