ISLAMABAD: The ruling PML-N was finally dragged on Thursday into the controversy revolving around allegations of malpractices in the 2013 general elections and now the subject of investigation by an inquiry commission.

The three-judge Judicial Commission headed by Chief Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk issued notices to the PML-N and also the Muttahida Qaumi Movement since the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and Jamaat-i-Islami had accused the two parties of having played a role in influencing the last elections.

“Issue notices to both the political parties which shall file their response, if so desires, by 12’O clock on April 25 (Saturday),” ordered the commission.

In its proposals, the PTI had argued that it was convinced that none of the solutions sought by it was unconstitutional and that these were political solutions to an essentially political dispute involving the core issue of legitimacy of mandate claimed by the PML-N when its chief Nawaz Sharif had made a public address at about 11.30pm before the official announcement of election results.

“This is enough to issue a notice to them,” PTI’s counsel Abdul Hafeez Pirzada suggested to the commission.

But before issuing notice to the PML-N, the chief justice asked the audience if any individual was there with instructions to represent the party. Although Information Technology Minister Anusha Rehman, Senator Rafiq Rajwana, Rohail Asghar and Talal Chaudhry were present in the Courtroom No 1, none of them volunteered to come forward.

Read: ECP rejects PTI claim of manipulation of 2013 polls

PTI Chairman Imran Khan, Vice President Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Secretary General Jehangir Tareen were present in the courtroom, but this time they preferred to sit on the left side of the front benches reserved for advocates waiting for their turn.

The commission made it clear again that its inquiry was only confined to find out whether or not there was any design to steal the 2013 elections, what that design was, who had made the plan and who had implemented it.

The National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) have already filed their replies to the proposals/instances of malpractices in the last elections highlighted by the PTI.

Its biometric analysis reports on 38 constituencies of national and provincial assemblies, Nadra said the fingerprints verification report should only be considered one of the many collaborative pieces of evidence.

The ECP, in its reply, denied that the 2013 general elections were systematically manipulated or influenced by design.

The Judicial Commission allowed the interested political parties to submit their lists of witnesses or additional evidence or material by Saturday if they wanted these to be examined by it.

But at the same time, the chief justice made it clear that it would be up to the commission to determine which witness it wished to examine and which to drop as envisaged under the terms of reference for the commission set up under a presidential ordinance.

Hafeez Pirzada drew the attention of the commission to two applications filed by the PTI on Thursday. One of them contained a list of evidence which the party wanted to be examined and included the names of Nabeel Gabol, anchorperson Hamid Mir, managing directors of the Printing Corporation of Pakistan and Pakistan Security Printing Corporation, Panjab’s former caretaker chief minister Najam Sethi and Fafen (Free and Fair Election Network) programme head Mudassir Rizvi.

During the proceedings, Justice Amir Hani Muslim, a member of the commission, observed that the additional evidence filed by the PTI was an elaboration of what it had furnished earlier in its proposals. “It does not travel beyond that,” he observed.

But Mr Pirzada disagreed and said it travelled way beyond that.

“Ultimately, it has to go much beyond the presumption,” Chief Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk reminded him.

Referring to the PTI’s second application, Mr Pirzada explained that there was a lurking fear in “our minds that the ECP might have destroyed the election record which it usually does a year after the elections”. And one way to secure and preserve the election material was to seal the entire record. Therefore, the ECP should give some undertaking that the election record would remain safe and preserved, he contended.

“I hereby give that undertaking,” Advocate Salman Akram Raja, representing the ECP, said and assured the commission that all election material was secured.

Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan, representing the PPP, came up with a one-page suggestion to help cut the proceedings short.

But the commission decided that it would work out modalities to be adopted for further proceedings with the assistance of political parties.

The proposal put forward by Mr Ahsan would also be considered, the commission said and postponed the hearing to Monday.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2015

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