MUZAFFARABAD: An election tribunal in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) on Tuesday declared the July 25, 2021 election in a constituency of Kashmiri refugees in Pakistan null and void due to “illegal and corrupt practice” by the returned PTI candidate and polling staff.

The decision was given by election tribunal judge Chaudhry Mohammad Munir on the petition of PML-N candidate Chaudhry Mohammad Ismail, whereby the latter had challenged the election results announced on July 25, 2021 and July 26, 2021 by the Returning Officer (RO) for LA-35, Jammu-II, and notification issued by the AJK Election Commission on July 27, 2021 declaring Chaudhry Maqbool Gujjar of PTI as winner.

The petitioner, who was represented by his counsel Raja Sajjad Ahmed, had accused the RO and polling staff of committing irregularities and altering results in Form 24 of at least 20 polling stations and leaving several counter files empty.

Mr Ismail had prayed for recounting and subsequently his declaration as successful candidate from the constituency concerned.

His counsel claimed that according to the unofficial and unverified results released by the presiding officers after the close of polling on July 25, 2021, the petitioner had won by a lead of around 4,000 votes.

However, contrary to the results, Mr Gujjar managed to get the “fake news” regarding his own victory announced on social and other media platforms, the counsel added.

According to him, the RO also used delaying tactics and did not release results received from the presiding officers on time to manipulate announcement in favour of Mr Gujjar.

Barrister Hamayun Nawaz and Sardar Jam Sadiq, the counsel for Mr Gujjar, rejected the allegations for being “wrong, against facts and fabricated” and called for dismissal of the petition.

The tribunal judge raised 10 points at issue to be argued by the parties and declared in his 29-page judgment that he had come to a conclusion that the petitioner had proved through his verbal and documentary evidence that the polling staff had changed the results of 20 polling stations at the behest of the respondent (Mr Gujjar) to reduce the number of actually cast votes in his (petitioner’s) favour.

Continuing, the judge said that the election result to declare Mr Gujjar as the returned candidate was issued by the RO on the basis of which the Election Commission had issued the notification of successful candidates on July 27, 2021.

The judge pointed out the counter files of eight polling stations were left blank without the requisite entries, which was in contravention of section 60 - a mandatory provision - of the AJK Elections Act, 2020 and rendered the election process suspicious.

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2023