ISLAMABAD: A lawmaker of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) on Thursday challenged in the Islamabad High Court the presidential ordinance that has made the electronic voting mandatory for the elections.

Mohsin Nawaz Ranjha, the MNA, through Barris­ter Umer Gillani filed a civil miscellaneous application which will be part of his petition already pending against successive presidential ordinances.

Last month, President Dr Arif Alvi had promulgated the Elections (Second Amendment) Ordinance, 2021, under Article 89 of the Constitution only two days after National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser constituted a committee of the cabinet members to engage the opposition on the issue of electoral reforms.

Through the ordinance, the president has introduced amendments to Section 94(1) and Section 103 of the Elections Act 2017 for electronic voting and enabling overseas Pakistanis to cast their votes.

Ranjha’s previous petition against eight ordinances awaits court decision

The application stated that the petitioner has already challenged the vires of eight ordinances promulgated by the president on October 30, 2019.

The said petition, which remains pending, was filed with the sole object of strengthening the institution of parliament whose powers are being usurped by the president through repeated abuse of ordinance-making power.

It said that the petitioner is once again approaching this court to assail an ordinance through which the entire elections mechanism of the country has been quietly changed.

According to the petition, the Election Commission of Pakistan under Section 103 of the Elections Act, 2017, may conduct pilot projects for utilisation of electronic voting machines (EVMs) and biometric verification system in by-elections in addition to the existing manual procedures for voter verification, casting and counting of votes to assess the technical efficacy, secrecy, security and financial feasibility of the EVMs.

However, the ordinance has made EVMs compulsory instead of being optional and has eliminated the role of parliament in piloting in this decision.

The petition pointed out that the timing of the promulgation of this ordinance adds insult to injury because only two days earlier, the NA speaker constituted a parliamentary committee on electoral reforms so that the government may be able to have an open and informed discussion with those members of the National Assembly who sit on the opposition benches.

It also pointed out that the impugned ordinance is not a one-off case of abuse of ordinance-making power. The website of the National Assembly indicates that since September 24, 2018, the president has promulgated more than 54 ordinances, adding that it appears that res­pondents have adopted ordinance-making as the normal and routine method for legislation, while avoiding parliamentary law-making as far as possible.

The petitioner requested the court to set aside the ordinance declaring it as void and illegal.

Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2021