KARACHI: An election tribunal has dismissed two election petitions filed by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf-backed aspirants against the victory of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan candidates on technical grounds.

Aftab Jahangir had approached the tribunal and submitted that he had contested the Feb 8 general elections from NA-244 (Karachi West-I) as independent candidate after his party had lost its electoral symbol.

Citing the Election Commission of Pakistan, provincial election commissioner, returning officer, the candidate elected from the constituency and others as respondents, he contended that the Form-45s, obtained by his polling agents from the presiding officers at all the polling stations of the constituency, clearly reflected that he had secured highest votes and won with big leads over his rival candidate.

However, he alleged that the respondents had robbed him of his mandate given by the people as his votes were extensively reduced through forgery of Form-45s and Form-47s and Farooq Sattar of the MQM-P was declared returned candidate.

PTI-backed Fauzia Siddiqui also filed a petition and contended that she had run in the election from PS-125 (Karachi Central-IV) and as per Form-45s, she got the highest votes.

However, the petitioner alleged that the elections were rigged and Adil Askari of the MQM-P was declared successful with over 63,800 votes and her votes were reduced to around 39,500.

The lawyers for the returned candidates had, however, raised preliminary issue of maintainability of these petitions and submitted that the same were liable to be rejected under section 145(1) of the Election Act, 2017.

The counsel argued that challans submitted by the petitioners for security costs were not in the prescribed head of account, oath administered on the verification of petitions was by unauthorised persons and the affidavits of service were not filed at the time of presenting the petitions.

The lawyers for wining candidates also submitted that those petitions were presented on March 25, without the “affidavit of service” as required by section 144(2)(c) of the Election Act and instead petitioners had filed “statements of service” which were not on oath.

After hearing the parties concerned, the tribunal headed by Justice Adnan Iqbal Chaudhry of the Sindh High Court observed that the objections to the affidavits of service were succeeded.

It also said that since both the petitions were filed without the affidavit of service mandated by section 144(2)(c) of the Election Act, those petitions were rejected under section 145(1) of the Act.

Published in Dawn, December 6th, 2024