KARACHI: The Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry elections took place on Saturday despite a Sindh High Court (SHC) order that had dismissed a KCCI petition seeking to hold its polls as scheduled.

The elections, held for the 2024-2026 term, saw a voter turnout of 24.38 per cent. Unlike last year’s election, which featured electronic voting, this year’s voting was conducted manually across 52 polling booths. Last year, only two counters were designated for manual voting. The KCCI has a total of 28,000 members, with over 16,000 registered voters.

A KCCI official suggested that the low number of registered voters and the reduced turnout could be attributed to the requirement that new members wait two years before their membership matures. Besides, the spread of rumours regarding the possible postponement of the poll on Saturday may have created doubts among voters.

He said a total of 72 candidates contested their luck in the KCCI polls, comprising two panels: the Businessmen Group (BMG) and the Businessmen Alliance (BMA), with each panel fielding 30 candidates.

The SHC’s two-judge bench, comprising Justice Yousuf Ali Sayeed and Justice Arbab Ali, turned down the petition on Friday for reasons to be recorded later.

Citing the Ministry of Commerce, Directorate General of Trade Organisations (DGTO) and others as respondents, the KCCI submitted that its elections were due on Sept 21 and preparation had been completed as the process of issuance of voter lists and allocation of serial numbers had also been completed.

However, the petitioner’s lawyer asserted that for reasons best known to the regulator (DGTO), it has, in a piecemeal manner, been passing orders on the complaints of some KCCI members and the last order about voter lists was emailed on Sept 13 to the petitioner.

The counsel also alleged that such acts and conduct of the regulator were based on bad intentions and meant to delay the elections.

The lawyer argued that there were various objections of DGTO, including separate lists of associate and corporate members, serial numbers allocated to specific candidates should be changed, e-voting cannot be allowed and fee for election cannot be increased from Rs15,000 to Rs100,000.

The KCCI counsel said that in the annual general meeting of KCCI held on Sept 30 last year, the shareholders resolved that the fee should be increased to Rs100,000 and e-voting be permitted.

Jamal Associates, one of the respondents in the petition, also approached the SHC and submitted that it intended to contest the KCCI elections and pleaded to become an intervener in these proceedings.

The proposed intervener argued that it had objected to preliminary voter lists, as most of the eligible voters listed by the petitioner were neither domiciled in the South district nor had substantial business interests in the same district.

It also asserted that the proposed intervener had first approached the secretary general of KCCI’s election commission but to no avail and then filed a complaint with the regulator. On Aug 13, the DGTO allowed the complaint and directed the KCCI to share voter lists according to their class of membership along with details as per Rule 18(3) of Trade Organisation Rules 2013.

The KCCI allegedly ignored these directives and issued a final voter list on Aug 20 without differentiating between associate and corporate members, allowing influential candidates to manipulate the electoral process.

The court stated in its order, “Learned counsel for the parties have been heard. For the reasons to be recorded later on, the instant petition stands dismissed.”

Published in Dawn, September 22nd, 2024