SC to take up PTI plea seeking re-election in PK-90

ISLAMABAD, Jan 26: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chitral has said a petition filed with the Supreme Court of Pakistan by one of its leaders seeking re-election in the whole constituency of (PK-90) Upper Chitral will be taken up for formal hearing very soon. Talking to ChitralToday on phone, PTI district president Abdul Lateef Advocate claimed that the petition filed by Rehmat Ghazi through his counsel Mian Abdul Rauf was on serial number 57 in the cause list issued by the apex court for the week starting on Monday (Jan 27). Mr Rehmat Ghazi was the PTI candidate for the seat in the May 11 2013 elections. However, when ChitralToday checked the Supreme Court cause list, this petition was not there for the current week. When our Editor Reporting Zulfiqar Ahmad contacted Mian Abdul Rauf Advocate on Tuesday, he said though the petition had been accepted by the court for hearing it was yet to be included in the cause list. He said the apex court may take up the petition for hearing some time in the next week. Mr Lateef said the petition of Mr Rehmat Ghazi sought re-election in the constituency due to the large-scale irregularities in the counting of the votes. During the recounting of the votes on the direction of the election tribunal on the appeal of PPP candidate and the runner-up Sardar Hussain, not a single bag of ballot paper was found sealed, showing foul play in handling the counting of ballots. The case in the tribunal also showed that as many as 192 votes had gone missing. It is also important to be noted that in the May 11 election, Ghulam Muhammad of the APML won the seat by bagging 10848 votes against Sardar Hussain’s 10841 votes – a margin of only seven votes. After the recounting of rejected and postal ballots on the direction of the election tribunal, the PPP candidate got a lead of just one vote. The tribunal judge in its verdict while recommending suspension of Mr Ghulam Muhammad had remarked: “One obvious course in this matter is re-election in the whole constituency.” But the point here was that, Sardar Hussain had moved the tribunal seeking recounting of the votes and neither he nor the suspended MPA ever sought re-election in the whole constituency. According to the lawyers of the PTI petitioner, there was no provision in the law for holding partial elections in such a case.  ]]>