Tribunal summons counsels for PML-N, PTI by Jan 17. PHOTO: MOHAMMAD NOMAN/EXPRESS
An audit report of the NA-122 constituency revealed 519 discrepancies in the election record, including 23,639 unsigned or unstamped ballot papers and 3,642 invalid ones.
A local commission was appointed by the Election Tribunal to scrutinise the constituency. The tribunal summoned the local commission and counsels for both parties, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), by January 17 for arguments.
The commission, comprising retired additional district and sessions judge Ghulam Hussain Awan, submitted its inquiry report stretching over 40 pages before the Election Tribunal Lahore Judge Kazim Malik.
The commission said that it found 519 discrepancies from the both sides: the record of PTI chief Iman Khan showed that 275 counterfoils of his votes were without thumb impressions while 232 counterfoils found in the record of National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq were without thumb impressions.
It stated that 4,180 votes polled to other candidates who stood in the same constituency and 2,693 votes were without the stamps of the polling staff appointed by the election tribunal, 750 votes were found without the stamps of the presiding officer.
The report stated that a total of 180,115 votes were polled in the constituency NA-122 out of which 92,393 votes were bagged by Ayaz Sadiq and Imran Khan obtained 83,542 votes.
It said that 180,115 are verified votes out of which counterfoils of 23,639 votes were unsigned and unstamped.
The commission also found 15 polling bags with broken seals and 10 bags were sealed improperly. It stated that there are 204 polling stations in which a series of counterfoils and ballot papers did not match.
The form 15 was missing from 59 polling stations while form 14 was not found in the record of 69 polling stations. There are total 128 polling stations in which form 15 and 14 is missing, report added.
Advocate Asjad Saeed, the counsel of Ayaz Sadiq and Advocate Anees Hashmi counsel of the PTI chief both were present in the tribunal when the commission submitted its report.
During course of the hearing, counsel for Imran pointed out that the federal information minister earlier had announced his verdict of NA-122 election petition in a news conference.
On this, the tribunal remarked that both political parties should desist from carrying out a media trial of the said election petition.
The tribunal can send the election record to the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) for verification of thumb impressions if the commission’s report doesn’t satisfy the tribunal.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 13th, 2015.
COMMENTS (18)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
@Patriot: In this case it is evident the presiding Officer and other did not carry out their responsibility and or they willfully wanted to create confusion. They must be punished. In future university students be allowed in the polling station to keep an eye over semi literate guardians of the polling station
The report is a first order of investigation. This just shows that there were irregularities. It is PMLN which has been standing in the way of these audits for 20 months. They are the direct beneficiaries of these elections. If they think that they were elected in a fair election, they should open the investigation and let the tribunals do their job. On the contrary! If 23,000+ missing counterfoils don't raise the alarm bells, then why do we have them for the other 156000+ votes. Why bother! I am sure that if a second order investigation is conducted to verify the actual votes, we will find that the number of bogus votes will far exceed the 23000+ votes with missing counterfoils.
@Purana Pakistani: No need to apologize bro, I wasn't offended :)
Patriot has made many good points, and I tend to agree with him.
Just to add, I heard that Abdul Qadir Baloch challenged the result of NA 271 in the 2008 elections, and he was declared winner by an ET. Apparently one factor was counterfoils without signatures, or stamps. I'm at work now, but will try and search for a detailed new report on this on the web later, but it seems that there might be a precedent set where counterfoils cannot be verified.
It is pertinent to note that the ET can send the ballots to NADRA for verification of thumbprints. If the ink allows, NADRA can check each ballot to see if the prints and CNIC match and if they belong to that particular PS of NA-122, whether there are multiple prints from the same people, etc. However, this would require that the proper ink have been used. If so, we don't have to guess what happened, it can be proven definitively. If all is ok with the ballots as per NADRA, no point in discussing the counterfoils.
@Purana Pakistani:
Yes, it doesn't say the vote will be cancelled because the vote CANNOT be cancelled. You have no way of knowing who the vote went to by looking at the counterfoil later, so to cancel it is impossible. A vote is rejected only on the basis of some obvious mistake on the ballot itself.
In a closely fought race like this, such a large number of votes cannot be ignored. And this is not about deciding whether Ayaz Sadiq is guilty or not, this is about determining whether the election was free and fair. After looking at all these irregularities, you have to draw a line in my opinion. Irregularities become rigging if they affect the result and it is quite likely that they did in this case. Can I say with certainty? No, of course not. Like I said, evidence has to be pieced together and a judgement reached. Whatever word you want to use, rigging or irregularities, it is not possible to give a clean chit to this election after seeing all the evidence.
A verdict to nullify the result and have a re-election, for example, does not establish guilt on a candidate per se. That is beyond the scope of an Election Tribunal. Only a Judicial Commission can conduct an investigation into this matter by calling all the Presiding Officers and other polling staff who are supposed to stamp each counterfoil with the unique stamp of that particular polling station and then sign it before handing out ballots. They should be questioned under oath and asked how/why they messed this up so badly. Was it by design or incompetence? It's hard to believe they accidentally missed out such a large number of counterfoils spread across several polling stations. This isn't just a few we're talking about.
I don't buy for a second that a losing candidate could judge he is losing such a close race and then infuence the polling staff to not fulfil their duties before handing out the ballots to be polled. Just doesn't make sense. On the other hand, it smacks of a hurried attempt to stuff ballots after the fact, to minimize vote deficit at certain PSs and/or manufacture a lead at closely fought ones, in order to influence the overall result. You may be able to get lots of thumbprints and CNICs on the ballots in a short time but it's very hard to find the specific stamp of each PS and get the sign of the PO on the counterfoils. Anyone wanting to rig an election in Pakistan would know to focus only on the ballots, given the existing election rules, and then use the innocent until proven guilty logic to argue if needed.
The whole business of stamping and signing the counterfoils is meant to avoid corrupt practices. I believe there is a precedent for elections being declared null and void with such irregularities in the past. Obviously, the judge will look at the totality of the evidence and then decide. How many of such PSs also have Form 14/15 missing? How many had bags unsealed and so on. We all have our own possible scenarios in our mind.
Finally, NA-122 ET will only decide this particular constituency so no one is saying this judgment will or will not call into question the entire election. For that, a JC is needed.
Dear Salman, I apologize if I sounded harsher than what was required. I mistook you for a regular PTI troll, my bad. Ofcourse this is a big loophole, which needs to be removed. Period!
Dear Patriot, But nowhere does it say, counterfoils not being signed will result in cancellation of the vote even if somehow we were able to map them together. That is the main question we face right now.
On other hand, innocent until proven guilty, still holds pretty much everywhere. Irregularities, even as abundant as these can not on their own nullify a single election result, let alone the whole elections. There are many questions, i.e. who didn't sign the counterfoils? why weren't they signed? were the counterfoils intentionally left un-stamped? if yes, why? could it be that a party (expecting a defeat) asked the presiding officer to provide irregularities? There are so many reasonable doubts that any guilty verdict would not only be unfair but will not hold.
Having said that, I completely agree with everything else that you have said. We need to probe these irregularities and identify the people responsible. A swift and reasonable reprimand should follow the investigations not only as a punishment for incompetency or else but also to ensure it doesn't happen again.
Also, for the readers' understanding, the reason the Commission's report has included these votes having counterfoils without sign and/or stamp of Presiding Officer in the count, is because there was no other choice. Ballot papers are anonymous once separated from the counterfoils so you have no way of associating a particular ballot with it's original counterfoil. There is no way you can exclude 23k or 30k plus votes from the final count without knowing to whom those votes were polled, and that is impossible to know without NADRA verification of the thumb/fingerprints. I see that as the next step if the ET doesn't feel satisfied with the report itself.
The Commission report has included counts of such votes (having counterfoils without sign/stamp) from each PS in tabular form. They did so because obviously, these votes are considered significant.
Also, irregularity to the extent of 30K plus votes which cannot be verified has to be questioned. Was it really an irregularity? I am currently in the process of an exercise to determine the results of the individual polling stations where such votes were cast, to see what the general trend of the results is there.
Also, people are forgetting some bags were unsealed, some were improperly sealed and Forms 14, 15 are missing for over a hundred polling stations. These are serious irregularities and together put the election result under a cloud.
No murderer ever leaves a video of himself pulling the trigger. Evidence is pieced together and used to implicate someone in the crime. In this case, we can't expect there to be anymore evidence of rigging/attempting to influence the result, on the part of the polling staff, than already found. We have to wait for the judge's ruling but to say everything is hunky dory would be a gross oversight. Even irregularities on such a scale demand that those responsible be punished and the next elections not be a joke like the 2013 GE.
@Purana Pakistani: You are referring to THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION RULES, 1988. Have a look at THE REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE ACT, 1976, Chapter IV, Section 33: Voting Procedure (pg.151 in the linked document):
(2) Before a ballot paper is issued to an elector— (a) 3[ * * *] (b) the number and name of the elector as entered in the electoral roll shall be called out; 4(c) the entry relating to the elector on the electoral roll shall be struck off to indicate that a ballot paper has been issued to him;] 5[(cc) he shall be required to receive a personal mark, made with indelible ink, on any finger of either hand as indicated by the Commission;] (d) the ballot paper shall be stamped on its back with the official mark and 6[signed] by the Presiding Officer; and (e) the Presiding Officer shall record on the counterfoil of the ballot paper the number of the elector on the electoral roll 2[the number of National Identity Card of the elector], stamp it with the official mark, 6[sign it and obtain on] it the thumb impression of the elector.
Point (e) above is relevant to the counterfoils issue in NA-122.
PTI has a case. Hope it clears things up for the readers.
@Haroon Mirza: Must feel good to be ignorant right Haroon?
@Purana Pakistani: Hope all you want _ blind followers of Shaitan Khan will toe the ever changing line of U-turn master! They will keep on confusing irregularity with rigging! Irregularity carried out by people, appointed by PPP and agreed upon and endorsed by Shaitan Khan himself!
@Purana Pakistani:
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I stand corrected. I apologize for any misconceptions, probably made in haste by me. It was not deliberate.
However, I do find it astonishing that a vote can be verified without the counterfoil also being verified. This seems like a big loophole in the verification of votes.
I guess we will have to see what the tribunal make of this.
Dear Salman,
This is the excerpt from Elections Laws vol 1, chapter 4, section 38, para 4, subsection (c) that you referred:
"(4) The Presiding Officer shall—
(c) count, in such manner as may be prescribed, the-votes cast in favour of each contesting candidate excluding from the count the ballot papers which bear— (i) no official mark and 1 [signature] of the Presiding Officer ; (ii) any writing or any mark other than 2 [* * *] the official mark, the signature of the Presiding Officer and the prescribed mark or to which a piece of paper or any other object of any kind has been attached ; (iii) no prescribed mark to indicate the contesting candidate for whom the elector has voted; or (iv) any mark from which it is not clear for whom the elector has voted: Provided that a ballot paper shall be deemed to have been marked in favour of a candidate if the whole or more than half of the area of the prescribed mark appears clearly within the space containing the name and symbol of that candidate and, where the prescribed mark is divided equally between two such spaces, the ballot paper shall be deemed invalid."
You are deliberately or otherwise, trying to confuse two different things, namely, VOTES and COUNTERFOILS. The section that you referred talks ONLY about votes that have not been signed, however, in the case that we have, it was the counterfoils that have not been signed. As per all the details that are coming out, all 180,115 votes have been signed and stamped, therefore, are accepted by the tribunal.
Hope this helps readers to understand.
Cheerios
Also a bit disappointed in you ET. All the news of press conferences by PMLN and PTI on this matter has been front page news pm your website. But the article actually providing facts is not visible on the front page...
The Commission headed by the retired additional district and sessions judge Ghulam Hussain Awan belongs to the culture under influence of the noora group.
"It said that 180,115 are verified votes out of which counterfoils of 23,639 votes were unsigned and unstamped."
Well, this line sums it up. 23639, unsigned and unstamped votes (i.e. not verifiable) have been included as verified votes. According to ECP's own rules, votes that have not been signed or stamped, should be EXCLUDED from the count.
Source: Election laws, vol 1, chapter 4, section 38, para 4, subsection (c), point (i). I didn't make that up, look it up yourself. http://ecp.gov.pk/ElectionLaws/Volume-I.pdf
Apart from this so many other irregularities have been pointed out.
But it is the above point that "unverified votes have been excluded from the count" that PMLN spokespersons have been lying about. Well, their lies have just been exposed.
Lets see what ECP tribunal does on basis of this report.
So what's next?
So...? What's the verdict? Who won and who lost? And what is the wayforward?