Alleged vote fraud: SC rejects PML-N lawmakers’ pleas against tribunal

Petitioners claim election tribunal passed orders without hearing them

LAHORE: A two-member bench of the Supreme Court dismissed the petitions of three Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) parliamentarians who had challenged the rulings of the election tribunal.

The bench headed by Justice Saqib Nisar pointed out on Thursday that the interim orders of the election tribunal cannot be challenged. It said only the final order can be challenged in a writ petition.



The petitioners had submitted that election tribunal judge Kazim Ali Malik was passing orders without listening to their appeal. They said they had no confidence in the tribunal; therefore its decisions should be declared as illegal and petitions against their election should be transferred to some other tribunal.

Member of National Assembly Malik Riaz and provincial lawmakers Mohsin Latif and Saiful Mulook had challenged the decision of the election tribunal, wherein it had ordered the recounting and inspection of votes after hearing the petitions filed by defeated candidates of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

Riaz had challenged decision of the LHC wherein it had dismissed his petition in October 2014 against recounting of votes. Riaz, MNA from NA 118 Lahore, had submitted that the election tribunal cannot interfere in the matters of the election commission.

Riaz had won the seat after polling 103,346 votes while the runner-up Hamid Zaman from PTI had bagged 43,616 votes.

The tribunal on August 17, 2014, had ordered the examination of an additional 117 bags of polled votes in Lahore’s PP-147 constituency from where PML-N’s Mohsin Latif had won.

Earlier, the polling bags were examined in PP-147 on the election tribunal’s directive where it was revealed that there had been a difference of 1,000 votes. MPA Mian Mohsin Latif had emerged victorious in the said constituency. But PTI had alleged that rigging had taken place in the constituency.

Corroborating the claims about rigging in the 2013 general elections, the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) revealed that vote verification in just six polling stations of PP-147 showed that 3,267 of the 4,726 votes could not be verified.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 2^nd, 2014.