KARACHI, Oct 10: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement on Thursday moved the Sindh High Court against the Election Tribunal, Karachi, and the National Database and Registration Authority for the verification of thumbprints on ballots and voters lists in NA-256, the National Assembly seat in the city won by its candidate.

MNA Iqbal Mohammed Ali, whose victory was challenged by the runner-up candidate of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf in the election tribunal, filed a constitutional petition through his counsel asking the court to set aside the tribunal order for the verification of thumb impressions and declare the Nadra report false and illegal.

An identical petition was filed simultaneously by a Muttahida MPA from PS-128, Waqar Hussain Shah, whose victory was also challenged in the election tribunal.

A Nadra report regarding the verification of thumbprints in PS-128 is expected to be submitted in the tribunal shortly.

Mr Shah’s counsel, Advocate Abrar Hussain, contended in the petition that the election tribunal headed by Zafar Ahmed Sherwani had acted in a biased and partial manner without considering the objection raised by MNA Ali on the application of the runner-up candidate, Mohammed Zubair Khan, who sought verification of thumb impressions.

He argued that the tribunal failed to appreciate that the exercise of thumbprints verification would not provide any fruitful result for the reason that even if certain ballots were found to be bogus, they would not reflect as to who was responsible for casting the votes.

The counsel submitted in the petition that it would not be constitutional to rely on the Nadra report, as nothing could be made out from it either in favour of the petitioner or the respondents.

He said that calling for such a report that in fact failed to determine anything judiciously about the alleged malpractice in the general elections could not be relied upon by the election tribunal without support of any cogent evidence.

The counsel stated that Nadra did not have the expertise to accurately check all the thumb impressions, as the magnetic ink had not been used in the voting process. Even otherwise, Nadra’s expertise in this regard could hardly lead to accurate results or verification, he added.

It was stated in the petition that the Nadra report provided “a false propaganda base to the media which is alleging that those thumb impressions which could not be compared by Nadra are bogus votes”.

The counsel said that in fact Nadra showed their inability to compare thumb impressions due to poor quality of ink used in the process.

The election tribunal had directed Nadra to carry out the examination and comparison of the election material, including a statement of count, used counterfoils and photo electoral rolls and verification of thumb impressions on 84,748 ballots on the application of the PTI candidate.

The Nadra report submitted in the tribunal revealed that only 6,815 thumb impressions on the ballots could be successfully authenticated, while the thumb impressions on 57,642 ballots could not be compared or matched through the Nadra system because the fingerprints were of very poor quality seemingly due to a lack of essential properties of the ink and inkpad used in the process of balloting.

Besides, the report disclosed that 11,343 counterfoils contained invalid computerised national identity card numbers, which were never issued by Nadra.

It stated that 791 votes were not even registered in the constituency and the fact was ascertained on the basis of the CNIC numbers mentioned on the used counterfoils. It said that the irregularity was mainly observed at polling stations 49, 57 and 58.

The Nadra report said there were 5,893 duplicate votes polled by 2,812 voters, mainly at the polling stations 56 (56 votes) and 46 (246 votes).

The report also mentioned that seven votes were cast at the polling station 168 on the CNIC 42201-5796395-3 issued in the name of Zaheer, son of Zaheeruddin Khan, a resident of C-15, City Terrace, Block-13, Gulistan-i-Jauhar.

It showed that 314 used counterfoils were found without having fingerprints on them. They were mainly found at the polling stations 178 (66 votes) and 18 (21 votes).

The report said only 6,815 votes were successfully authenticated by Nadra’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), meaning thereby that fingerprint affixed on the counterfoil at the time of the issuance of the ballot paper correctly matched with the fingerprint data of registered voters held with Nadra in citizens’ database.

The Nadra report revealed that 1,950 ballots failed authentication, meaning that someone else voted against the CNIC number mentioned on the used counterfoils.