MUZAFFARABAD: Already reduced to a minor party in the 53-member Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Legislative Assembly, opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) suffered another jolt on Sunday when one of its lawmakers lost his seat to his rival from Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in a recount held on the orders of the territory’s Supreme Court.

According to the result issued by the Returning Officer (RO) Chaudhry Muhammad Fayyaz on Form 27, Chaudhry Mohammad Ismail — a resident of Mohalla Shahzada Shaheed Gujranwala — had been declared duly elected from LA-35, Jammu-II, in elections held on July 25, 2021.

Of the 48,412 polled votes in 142 polling stations, Mr Ismail had bagged 19,670 as against 18,817 by his rival Chaudhry Maqbool Ahmed of PTI, according to the RO.

LA-35, Jammu-II, is one of the 12 constituencies of the AJK Assembly located in Pakistan, mostly in the province of Punjab.

Six of them are reserved for the migrants from occupied Jammu, and the rest are for the migrants from occupied Kashmir Valley.

Mr Ahmed was notified by the AJK Election Commission (EC) as the returned candidate from this constituency on July 27, 2021, a day after the issuance of the result on Form 27 by the then RO, which showed that he had secured 18,934 votes against 16,855 by Mr Ismail.

However, the RO’s announcement and commission’s notification to the extent of Mr Ahmed were challenged by Mr Ismail in an election tribunal, with a prayer for recounting and subsequently his declaration as a successful candidate.

After raising 10 points at issue to be argued by the parties, the tribunal judge held on October 3 last year that petitioner, Mr Ismail, had proved through his verbal and documentary evidence that the polling staff had changed the results of 20 polling stations at the behest of his rival, Mr Ahmed, to reduce the number of actual votes cast in favour of Mr Ismail.

The tribunal judge had directed the EC to conduct fresh elections in the constituency, apart from proceeding against the “culpable presiding officers” under the relevant rules.

However, Mr Ahmed challenged the tribunal’s decision in the AJK Supreme Court on October 6, which ordered that the status quo should be maintained until the disposal of his appeal.

Meanwhile, Mr Ismail also filed an appeal in the apex court against the tribunal’s order, stating that instead of fresh elections, he should be declared a returned candidate.

Both appeals were clubbed together, and Mr Ismail’s offer of recounting was agreed upon by Mr Ahmed.

Recounting was conducted by the commission’s secretary, Sardar Ghazanfar, who was declared RO for the purpose.

However, after the completion of the recounting of all 142 polling stations, the RO had segregated some 5700 ballot papers as “disputed votes,” following which Mr Ismail expressed no confidence in him.

As his objection was dismissed by the chief election commissioner, Mr Ismail filed an appeal in the high court, which was also turned down.

Finally, Mr. Ismail got relief from the apex court on January 8, which replaced Mr Ghazanfar with Mr Fayyaz, the high court registrar, with the consent of both parties.

The recounting process started at 11 am on Saturday [January 20] in the EC building and continued at a stretch until 7:30 a.m. on Sunday, followed by the announcement of the election result by Mr Fayyaz in favour of Mr Ismail.

Mr Ismail was most likely to be administered the oath of office on Monday after the commission would formally notify his victory.

Meanwhile, the defeat of Mr Ahmed has reduced the strength of PTI loyalists in the AJK assembly to six from 32 in 2021.

The former ruling party has been sitting on the opposition benches since April 20 last year, when most of its members joined a so-called ‘forward bloc’ to become part of a coalition government led by Chaudhry Anwarul Haq and including the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN-Q).

With Mr Ismail’s victory, the size of the PML-N parliamentary party has increased to eight.

Interestingly, the PML-N has recently granted its ticket for the upcoming Punjab assembly elections to a PTI renegade and sitting AJK’s minister for forests, Akmal Sargalla, who was elected from LA-37, Jammu-IV, in July 2021.

However, here, Mr Sargalla has yet to formally declare his association with the PML-N.

Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2024