ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) today (Thursday) has ordered re-election in NA-75 constituency on March 18 after suspicions that the results may have been falsified.
Hearing an application by PML-N candidate Syeda Nosheen Iftikhar, A five-member commission, headed by the chief election commissioner, declared the by-poll held in the constituency on February 19 as “null and void”.
During today’s hearing, PTI lawyer Barrister Ali Zafar addressed the ‘disappearance’ of the staff of 20 polling stations in the constituency, saying that it was “not right to say that a delay in results means they were altered”.
He also pointed out that there was no set time for presiding officers to report at the returning officer’s office. “The phone batteries die after an entire day of usage,” he added.
To which, ECP’s Khyber Pakhutnkhwa member Irshad Qaiser said, “Did everyone’s phone battery die, including the driver?” The PTI lawyer insisted that the RO had requested re-election in 14 polling stations on the “basis of speculation”.
“There is no controversy in 337 out of 360 polling stations and an attempt was made to prove a rigging conspiracy,” he added. Meanwhile, PML-N lawyer Salman Akram Raja demanded a forensic audit of votes cast in the 20 polling stations whose results are questionable.
Barrister Zafar further said that none of the presiding officers had talked about being kidnapped or falsifying results. “The commission will first have to declare that the presiding officers are lying,” he remarked.
The by-election in the NA-75 constituency last week was marred by violence after two people were killed and three others injured in a firing incident at a polling station in Daska.
The ECP had withheld the results after 20 presiding officers in the constituency went missing for several hours and top officials of the district administration were unavailable to the commission to answer its queries.
The commission said results of the NA-75 constituency were received with “unnecessary delay”, adding that it tried to contact the presiding officers several times but with no success.
While the PML-N had alleged massive rigging, the PTI had claimed to win the election and had lashed out at the opposition party for only accepting those results that came out in their favour.
