HYDERABAD, Sept 1: The Sindh High Court, Hyderabad circuit bench, has issued notices to the deputy attorney general, the additional advocate-general, the district returning officer and the returning officer of the UC-20 for September 5 on a petition, challenging the result of the council.

The petition was filed by defeated candidates Abdul Waheed Qureshi and Mohammad Shakir Khan who contested as nazim and naib nazim as Haq Parast Group candidate.

According to petitioners’ case, they were allotted symbol of football in ballot which also contained symbols like kite which was banned by the Election Commission for 2005 local body polls. They secured 3,650 votes whereas respondents, Hussain Bux Hussaini and Mohammad Nayoon obtained 2,599 votes only.

At the time of counting 1,236 votes, obtained by petitioners were rejected by the presiding officer with result that 2,414 and 2,599 votes were declared valid in favour of petitioners and respondents, respectively, while none of the votes of respondents were rejected.

Accordingly, respondents were declared duly elected as nazim and naib nazim UC 20 city.

The petitioners submitted an application to the RO, stating that symbol of football was printed in black ink while colour of ink used in the seal was blue and according to presiding officer the seal, stamped on football was invisible and for that reason petitioners’ 821 votes were rejected.

The petitioners pointed out in application that though assigning ‘kite’ was prohibited by the election commission yet it was printed on ballots with result that voters stamped ‘kite’, considering it as a symbol of petitioners and about 415 votes bearing symbol of kite were not counted in favour of petitioners.

The RO rejected application on August 27 for reason that it was filed late as consolidated result was already prepared though no notice in writing was given to the petitioners or to the polling agents by the RO as required under Rule 40 (II) for information of day for consolidations of results.

The DRO rejected application under the Sindh Local Government Rules 2005 on the ground that there was no provision of appeal in the Rules. Both the orders of August 27 of RO and August 29 of DRO were illegal as consolidation of result was prepared without serving any notice.