ISLAMABAD: An amendment to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government Act, 2013 came under fire on Friday when Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar regretted that the law seemed to have been made in haste since it was replete with mistakes.

“To hold the local government elections in haste, it seems the law was copy-pasted without going deep into its drafting,” observed the chief justice while heading a three-judge Supreme Court bench.

The bench had taken up a set of appeals moved by Sardar Sher Bahadar Khan and others against their disqualification by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). Likewise, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam’s (JUI-F) Asghar Ali and four others from Lakki Marwat District Council had filed appeals against their disqualification for casting their votes in favour of the candidates belonging to the Pakistan Peoples Party and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) in the elections for nazim and naib nazim.

The Supreme Court, however, reserved its ruling.

Bahadar Khan, who was PTI’s president in Abbottabad district, was disqualified by the ECP on Jan 25 last year under Section 78-A of the KP local government act on a reference moved by PTI’s provincial organiser Fazal Mohammad Khan. Section 78-A was introduced in the law to discourage horse-trading by empowering the party head to withdraw membership of a member for violating party policy or discipline.

During the 2015 local government polls, Bahadar Khan was not given a party ticket to contest the election from Union Council Khel Urban (Abbottabad). Subsequently, he formed a forward bloc for contesting the election as an independent candidate and defeated the party candidate by a huge margin.

Bahadar Khan and Shaukat Ali Tanoli then filed their nomination papers for the next phase of the elections for nazim and naib nazim of the Abbottabad District Council scheduled for Aug 8, 2015. The PTI fielded Ali Khan Jadoon and Sardar Waqar Nabi as its candidates for the two seats.

In his petition moved through senior counsel Sardar Muhammad Aslam, Bahadar Khan claimed that even during the second phase of the elections, the party did not convey any clear directive restraining them from contesting the elections against its candidates as no election symbol had been allotted to any of the candidates.

Fazal Khan initiated the proceedings against the petitioner under Section 78-A of the local government act and issued a show-cause notice asking Bahadar Khan to explain why he should not be declared defected from the party.

The proceedings were also initiated against 20 other members, including district naib nazim Shaukat Ali Tanoli, for violating party discipline to be removed ultimately through a reference in the ECP. The Peshawar High Court also rejected his appeal on April 6 this year.

The petitioner argued that since Section 78-A had been inserted into the local government act on Aug 24, 2015, after the announcement of the election schedule, it had no legal effect because the elections were to be held on Aug 30. Likewise, the petition said, the declaration under Section 78-A by a three-member ECP bench, instead of the full five-member bench, was not sustainable in the law.

Published in Dawn, September 23rd, 2017