KARACHI: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan on Wednesday challenged before the Election Commission of Pakistan the victory of Pakistan Peoples Party candidate Saeed Ghani in the July 9 by-election on a provincial assembly seat (PS-114) in Karachi’s Mehmoodabad area, asking the ECP to order recounting of the votes of the entire constituency.

The MQM also requested the ECP to order the National Database and Registration Authority for verification of thumb impressions of the entire votes at its candidate’s cost.

It also asked the ECP not to issue the final notification with regard to the victory of Mr Ghani till the settlement of the matter.

Advocate Iqbal Qadri, who is also a member of the National Assembly belonging to the MQM from Karachi, filed an application in the ECP headquarters in Islamabad on behalf of Kamran Khan Tessori, the MQM candidate in the PS-114 constituency.

ECP asked not to issue final notification of Saeed Ghani’s victory

An MQM spokesman told Dawn that the application would come up for hearing on Thursday (today) and Senator barrister Farogh A. Nasim would represent Mr Tessori before the ECP.

The party took the plea that the PS-114 by-election was “completely rigged by the Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians, who misused the entire government of Sindh machinery and the local police”.

It said that the entire by-election was held in violation of the mandate given by the apex court in its historic judgement, through which it declared the result of the 2013 general election void because of vote rigging.

Referring to the Supreme Court’s verdict, the applicant said that the SC pointed out 27 polling stations — 10, 12 to 15, 23, 24, 32, 37, 42 to 46, 65 to 69 and 83 to 90 — in which rigging had taken place. “The rigging this time took place again in the said polling stations,” the MQM said.

It said that many people were arrested “red-handed” while casting bogus votes, but their votes were not identified or excluded. It alleged that those arrested were either related to PPP candidate Ghani or belonged to the ruling party.

On the day of polling, it said, polling stations 79, 85, 86, 87 and 90 were allegedly captured by the PPP through police for casting bogus votes.

The MQM also accused the PPP of carrying out “pre-poll rigging” and accused the returning officer and district returning officer of orchestrating it at the behest of the ruling party.

It said the polling stations 84 to 92 — from where the MQM traditionally secured more votes than other parties — were kept at a very far distance and the said polling stations were also kept very close to one another. “This inconvenienced the voters, preventing them from reaching the said polling stations. Additionally, because of the very close proximity of these polling stations to one another, the voters were clustered, harassed and were further inconvenienced. Because of [this], the voters of MQM shied away and the PPPP had a field day in casting bogus votes.”

The MQM further stated that the constituency had never been won by the PPP since 1998 till 2017 and the party never got more than 3,827 votes, “but surprisingly this time its candidate secured 23,797 votes which cannot be believed”.

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2017