ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has said that returning officers (ROs) have been seeking too many details regarding the financial position of election candidates instead of sticking to the salient issues they are supposed to seek information about under an understanding reached with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

This is making the already onerous job of carrying out preliminary verification all the more unwieldy.

In a letter sent to the ECP, the FBR has said that it cannot provide all the details requested by the ROs in the limited time available. Therefore, the board will only answer the queries covered under the aforesaid understanding.

Meanwhile, a group of NGOs monitoring the election process has said the ROs have been applying wide discretion in scrutinising the nomination papers filed by the candidates. The various approaches used by them in their efforts to ascertain the suitability or otherwise of the candidates threaten to undermine the fairness of the whole exercise.

The letter written to the ECP by the FBR’s intelligence and investigation wing said it had been clearing the nomination forms sent to it for preliminary verification as speedily as possible. However, “continuous and massive flow of fresh cases has to be taken into account”.

On Friday alone, 4,000 new cases were sent to it for preliminary verification. The letter said that under the mechanism agreed to with the ECP the ROs were supposed to get only key details verified. This included the National Tax Number (NTN) and income and tax details of the last three years.

The letter said the FBR had formulated comprehensive guidelines for the ROs. These guidelines were provided to the ECP for dissemination much before the filing of nomination papers.

“The document answers all the basic issues faced by the ROs in the process of scrutiny,” the letter said.

The guidelines formulated for the ROs made it clear that filing of income tax returns was obligatory if the candidate was enjoying taxable income of Rs350,000 or more; owned immovable property with an area of 250 square yards or more or owned a flat located in areas falling within the municipal limits existing immediately before the commencement of local government laws in the provinces…; owned a vehicle of 1000cc; had obtained the NTN; or was the holder of commercial or industrial connection of electricity where the amount of annual bill exceeded Rs1 million.

Every individual whose business generated income of Rs300,000 to Rs350,000 was also required to file tax returns from tax year 2012. The guidelines said that in all these scenarios non-filing of income tax returns amounted to tax default.

The FBR also proposed queries that could be put to the candidates by the ROs, said the FBR letter.

HEAVY WORKLOAD: The ECP continued to receive for the fifth day thousands of nomination papers from the ROs for preliminary verification by the National Database and Registration Authority, the State Bank of Pakistan, the National Accountability Bureau and the FBR, leaving analysts wondering how many more days would be required to complete the scrutiny work.

Sources said the ECP had so far received at least 23,500 nomination papers from the ROs, but it was still not clear if more papers would pour in.

INCONSISTENT APPROACHES: The Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen), a group of 30 NGOs, observed that the discretion being exercised by the ROs in scrutinising the papers of the candidates was “compromising the fairness of the scrutiny process”. It urged the ECP to take corrective measures immediately.

Fafen said the ROs were applying “inconsistent approaches in phrasing questions and varying techniques to assess the candidates’ qualifications and disqualifications under articles 62 and 63 of the constitution”.

Consequently, the candidates’ papers were not being vetted in a uniform fashion, raising fundamental and serious concerns about the fairness of the process.

In some cases, the ROs seemed to be overstepping their authority in ways that were detrimental to the legitimacy of the scrutiny process, said Fafen. “A case in point is the disqualification of Ayaz Amir, ex-member of the National Assembly from Chakwal who was disqualified on the grounds of having written (articles) against the ideology of Pakistan.

“However, in assessing Mr Amir’s actions, constitution’s article 62(1)(g) should have been read with article 63(1)(g), which requires conviction ‘by a court of competent jurisdiction for propagating any opinion, or acting in any manner, prejudicial to the ideology of Pakistan’.”

Since Mr Amir had not been convicted by a court with competent jurisdiction, he should not have been disqualified on this basis, Fafen said.