15 July 2004	Thursday	26 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

KARACHI, July 14: The Sindh High Court asked the three Muttahida Qaumi Movement candidates seeking notification of their election on Wednesday to produce the past electoral record of their constituencies, NA-240, NA-246 and PS-127 , and adjourned further hearing of their petition to Thursday.

A division bench, comprising Justices Anwar Zaheer Jamali and Gulzar Ahmed, made the order when the petitioners' counsel, advocate Abul Inam, submitted that the whole controversy boiled down to the question whether voter turnout was affected by the violence perpetrated on May 12, the day balloting was conducted for one provincial and three national assembly seats in Karachi, at a couple of places.

He claimed that according to the Election Commission's own record, the polling on May 12 was by and large commensurate with the number of votes cast at different polling stations in the 2002 general election.

The petition was taken up by the bench at noon in the presence of Attorney-General Makhdoom Ali Khan, Advocate-General Anwar Mansoor Khan, Additional Advocate-General Dr Qazi Khalid Ali, Deputy Attorney-General Azhar Nadeem Siddiqui, who is appearing for the Election Commission, the EC officials, the petitioners and their counsel, and counsel for some of the respondents. More respondents, including PPP candidate in PS-127 Umar Jat, entered appearance through their counsel on Wednesday.

Assisted by Advocate Aftab Ahmed Shaikh, Advocate Inam stated that the Election Commission directed the returning officers to consolidate the results after counting of votes. Having ordered consolidation of results, the EC was left with no authority to withhold their declaration.

Under the Representation of People Act, the announcement of results could be withheld only if the successful candidate failed to file the return of election expenses incurred by him.

The counsel then read out the reports submitted by the returning officers to the Election Commission to show that the balloting proceeded smoothly. The EC instructions were meticulously followed.

No incident involving bogus voting, ballot tampering, box snatching or restraint on voters took place in any of the 701 polling stations in the three constituencies. The EC itself declined to entertain certain unsubstantiated complaints by absentee complainants.

The complaints by rival candidates the EC acted on in its impugned order were made after 8pm as an 'afterthought' after the conclusion of balloting and counting of votes. Such complaints could have been adjudicated only by election tribunals constituted by the EC for the purpose.

The EC, the counsel argued, could at most have ordered repolling at the only polling station (Jafar Tayyar Society, Malir) where voting was suspended for a while due to disturbance.

A whole constituency could not be asked to go to the polls time and again only because there was disturbance at one polling station. Section 103-AA of the Representation of People Act was intended to empower the EC to take a prompt action to redress an actual wrong.

It was not meant to authorize it to conduct ex parte proceedings on rival candidates' complaints and set aside the entire electoral exercise. The counsel said the impugned EC order set a 'dangerous' precedent as election results could be predicted in all but a few hotly-contested constituencies.

The losing candidates could always create disturbance outside, if not inside, the polling stations to have the balloting annulled. Advocate Inam was still on his legs when the bench rose for the day.