LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Tuesday restrained the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) from notifying results of two union councils of Sargodha’s Lalyani tehsil, where women were allegedly not allowed to cast their votes.

A voter of UC-34 filed a petition and alleged that candidates for chairman and vice chairman slots in his constituency and UC-35 had an ‘unwritten’ agreement according to which they did not allow women of both UCs to cast their votes.

The petitioner’s counsel asked the court to restrain the ECP from issuing notification of the returned candidates from both constituencies. The PML-N candidates won election in UC-34 and 35.

A deputy attorney general argued that the petitioner was not an aggrieved party and could not agitate the matter. He further said the ECP received no complaint from any woman voter of the constituencies.

Justice Farrukh Irfan Khan rejected the arguments and observed that every citizen of Pakistan was an aggrieved party if women were not allowed to cast votes in any constituency of the country. He said the matter was of grave concern and the court could not let it go merely on technical grounds.

Justice Khan restrained the ECP from notifying final results of both UCs and sought its reply by Wednesday (today).

summoned: The election tribunal on Tuesday summoned Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s Hamid Zaman for his ‘objectionable’ remarks on its decision in the NA-118 alleged rigging case.

The tribunal had on Nov 25 dismissed an appeal of Mr Zaman against victory of Riaz Malik of the PML-N from NA-118, Lahore.

The tribunal had observed that the petitioner failed to establish allegations of rigging in the general election of 2013 held in the constituency.

The tribunal-member, Rashid Qamar, directed the PTI leader to appear in person on Wednesday (today) and also sought record of his statements from the media.

The tribunal also released detailed verdict of the case.

Correcting a mistake in the short order, the tribunal said 145 voters had obtained double vote for using their franchise against whom direction for taking action by the ECP had already been ordered whereas, in short order, the number of 145 was inadvertently mentioned as 291.

“So said number of voters 291 be read as number of voter as 145,” the verdict said.

Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2015