LAHORE, Sept 24: Mr Justice Asif Saeed Khosa of the Lahore High Court on Tuesday allowed Pakistan Lawyers Forum counsel to implead the chief election commissioner as a party by amending his writ petition praying for declaring the Presidential Referendum of April 30 as a fraudulent exercise.

The need for amendment to the writ petition arose when Deputy Attorney-General Khawaja Saeed-uz-Zafar pointed out that not only its contents and prayer, the documents submitted as evidence were also identical with the PLF Writ Petition challenging the validity of the Legal Framework Order pending in the court of Mr Justice M. Javed Buttar of the LHC.

Reading out parts of the two writ petitions to substantiate his point, the DAG prayed that both the petitions should be heard by the same bench because not only the contents of the two were similar, the petitioner and the counsel were also same. He said the petitioner had referred to the alleged irregularities in the referendum in his writ against the LFO as well.

Opposing the proposal of the DAG, PLF Counsel A.K. Dogar dropped the portions of the prayer having similarity to that of the writ petition against the LFO.

He said he would neither challenge the legality of the referendum as it had been settled in the Qazi Hussain Ahmed Case, nor question its consequences, but would only pray for declaring it as a deceitful and fraudulent exercise in rigging and a criminal act perpetrated against the people of Pakistan.

When it was pointed out that the chief election commissioner, who had held the referendum, had not been impleaded as a party in the writ petition, the counsel said he was ready to file an amended petition impleading the CEC as a party. The court allowed amendment to the petition and adjourned the hearing till Oct 15 because the Deputy Attorney General wanted enough time to secure comments of the CEC on the amended petition to be filed by the counsel within a week.