ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf is likely to complete the cross-examination of its witnesses on Monday (June 1) after the recording of testimonies of former caretaker chief minister of Punjab Najam Sethi and anchorperson Hamid Mir.

Senior counsel Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, representing the PTI, informed a three-judge poll inquiry commission headed by Chief Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk on Friday that he intended to cross-examine Najam Sethi and Hamid Mir when the commission would resume its hearing on Monday.

The commission is investigating allegations of ‘widespread and systematic rigging’ in the 2013 general elections.

About the instructions Mr Pirzada had been asked to seek from his client on the application of the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians, he said he could not contact PTI Chairman Imran Khan because he was busy in campaigning for the local government elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

In its application, the PPPP expressed apprehensions over the outcome of the 2013 elections and said the results had been manipulated not only in Punjab but also in KP. It alleged that returning officers and presiding officers had been used to subvert the election results.

On Friday, Shahid Hamid, representing the PML-N, and Salman Akram Raja, appearing on behalf of the Election Commission, cross-examined ECP’s former secretary Ishtiak Ahmed Khan.

Mr Khan said he was one of the participants in the Sept 17, 2012 consultative meeting of 16 political parties which had proposed appointment of judicial officers as district returning officers (DROs) and returning officers (ROs).

Consequently, he said, the ECP had requested the National Judicial Policy Making Committee headed by then chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry to allow appointment of judicial officers as election officers.

Mr Khan said the committee had approved it after a two-hour briefing by him at the Supreme Court building.

He said it was for the ROs to determine booths in each polling station. There were 190,000 polling booths in 70,000 stations.

He said DROs, ROs and additional ROs were required to deposit post-election material to the treasury, except Forms 16 and 17 which were to be sent to the ECP immediately after the consolidation of election results. The instructions were issued because the ECP did not have storage facility at its secretariat and other provincial offices.

Mr Khan said that except for the 1993 elections, the number of ballot papers always exceeded the number of total registered voters during elections held from 1970 to 2013. The ECP had allowed both international and local observers to monitor the 2013 elections. The observers were from the Commonwealth, European Union, US’s National Democratic Institute, Japan, Malaysia, Canada and a few other countries.

As a matter of policy, he said, the ECP had also encouraged and facilitated every organisation which wanted to visit polling stations to monitor the election process. Media was also given access to all polling stations.

The ECP also received opinions of the observers after which a post-review report was prepared which was a non-official view of the commission.

Mr Khan said it was the constitutional requirement of the caretaker governments at the centre and in the provinces to assist the ECP during elections. He said the election record maintained by ROs was part of the official record.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play