ISLAMABAD: A petition against the rejection of seven votes that would have turned the election of the Senate chairman in the favour of the Pakis­tan Democratic Movement could not be filed in the Islamabad High Court on Monday as the opposition alliance could not get certified copies of the record because of the sudden closure of the Senate Secretariat for disinfection.

Talking to Dawn, advocate Javaid Iqbal Wains, a lawyer of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), said that he went to the Senate Secretariat to collect the record which Senator Farooq H. Naek had formally requested from the secretariat following the election of Senate chairman.

However, he said, the security officials informed him that due to the disinfection procedure, the offices were closed.

The National Assembly Secretariat had on March 12 issued an order for closure of offices from March 13 to 16.

Similarly, the Senate Secretariat had in an order issued on the same date ordered shutting down of offices from March 15 to 17 “to disinfect the Parliament House building”.

Javaid Wains said that the petition was ready but without having the original record and, therefore, “we cannot file it in the Islamabad High Court”.

Mr Wains is part of the PPP’s legal team comprising Farooq H. Naek, Raza Rabbani, Syed Nayyar Hussain Bukhari and Sardar Latif Khan Khosa.

He said that as soon as “we get the record, we will file the petition the next day”.

“The petition is simple as we expect the court to answer the one-line question: whether a stamp within the box of candidate is disenfranchisement of the voter,” he said.

He said that bar of Article 69 was not applicable to this case since the presiding officer himself had advised advocate Naek to file the application in the tribunal.

Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2021