KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Thursday directed the Election Commission of Pakistan to hold free and fair local government elections in accordance with relevant laws.

A two-judge bench of the court disposed of a petition seeking court directives for the ECP to refund fees collected from aspiring candidates with nomination forms across the province.

The bench also ordered the ECP to return the nomination fee in the sum of Rs5,000 to the petitioner, Mureed Ali Shah, who had impleaded the ECP through the provincial election commissioner as respondent.

Petitioner Shah submitted that the SHC had set aside the entire exercise of delimitation carried out for the local government elections, which were scheduled to be held on Dec 30, 2013, and the ECP had been asked to announce a new schedule for the local government elections in the province after carrying out fresh delimitation of constituencies.

He further said that the Supreme Court of Pakistan had also upheld the SHC verdict while dismissing a Sindh government appeal against it.

The petitioner stated that the election schedule was postponed after the courts’ verdicts and no fresh schedule for the local government polls has been announced so far.

He said that the aspiring candidates had submitted nomination fee with their papers. He pleaded to the court to direct the ECP to reimburse the money collected by the ECP with nomination papers, as no fresh schedule had been announced yet.

The ECP had submitted a schedule of holding LG polls to the Supreme Court, stating that polls would be held in three stages, with the third stage ending on March 26, 2016.

However, the SC rejected the proposed schedule and asked the election commission to hold the polling four months earlier, as a lot of time had already been wasted by the election commission. Subsequently, the ECP agreed to revise its proposed schedule and hold the polls by September 2015.

Hepatitis medicine case

Meanwhile, a single bench comprising Justice Mohammad Shafi Siddiqui threw out the award of hepatitis medicine tender to two multinational companies — Roche Pakistan and Schering Plough — and directed the provincial government to float fresh tender.

While allowing an application of Getz Pharma, a local pharmaceutical company, the court declared that the process of procuring costly medicines worth Rs250 million was violative of the constitution and the Sindh Public Procurement Regulatory Authority rules as unlawful conditions were imposed while rejecting the bids of local pharmaceutical firms.

The court observed that the conduct of the provincial government’s officials was highly doubtful throughout the tender process while rejecting the local pharmaceutical company on unfair and arbitrary reasons.

The single bench also observed that since the medicines in question were required for hepatitis patients on a priority basis, the provincial government may opt to float the tender afresh for procurement in accordance with relevant laws.

Earlier, the court had rejected the plea of the provincial health department for partial purchase of hepatitis medicine from the two multinationals on the ground that the case was being heard on a priority basis.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2015

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