According to Advocate Qazi Abdul Rasheed, the petitioner’s counsel, the petition was dismissed because they had failed to prove a case against the PML-N MPA and effectively challenge his victory in the by-polls on June 6. However, he insisted that a detailed order had yet to be collected from the tribunal.
Fareed won the PK-45, Abbottabad-II seat which Ali Asghar too was vying for. In August, the latter filed a petition and demanded the election commission promptly disqualify Fareed for allegedly concealing assets worth millions.
According to the PTI leader, Fareed had concealed his agricultural lands measuring 213 kanals and 19 marlas in Boi village while filing his nomination papers. Moreover, Ali Asghar accused Fareed of not declaring his Islamabad residence, thus violating articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution.
The election commission had referred the petition to an election tribunal in Abbottabad for early disposal.
However, the tribunal’s presiding officer Ziauddin Khatak dismissed the petition after hearing the case for five months. According to his verbal order, Ali Asghar failed to prove his case as the land referred to in the petition had been sold in 1994.
The PTI leader, meanwhile, has vowed to challenge the tribunal’s decision in the Supreme Court.
Fareed contested the by-polls and won the seat by securing 27,682 votes, while Ali Asghar came in second with 21,227 votes. The PK-45 seat fell vacant after Sardar Mehtab Abbasi of the PML-N forfeited it following his elevation to the office of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa governor. There are 118,765 registered voters in the constituency.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 24th, 2014.
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