PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court has declared as illegal an inquiry started by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Anti-Corruption Establishment into alleged irregularities in last year’s general elections and summoning of several presiding officers of polling stations in this regard.

A bench consisting of Justice Sahibzada Asadullah and Justice Dr Khurshid Iqbal accepted a joint petition filed by five of the presiding officers of respective polling stations of a provincial assembly constituency, challenging the inquiry and issuance of notices to them by ACE on Aug 29 for appearance.

The high court had last month issued a restraining order, directing ACE not to take any negative action against the five petitioners. The petitioners including a lecturer at a local college Ms Saima and four others had requested the court to set aside and quash the impugned inquiry and notices issued to them as the same were illegal and unconstitutional.

The bench has pronounced a short order of accepting their pleas and would release the detailed judgement later. During previous hearing, the bench had accepted plea of former provincial minister Taimoor Saleem Khan Jhagra and had impleaded him as respondent in the petition.

Accepts plea of presiding officers against probe

Barrister M Yaseen Raza Khan appeared for the petitioners and stated that his clients had served as presiding officers at their respective polling stations during the general elections held in Feb 2024.

He said that in the aftermath of general elections, petitioners and other similarly placed presiding officers faced a heavy backlash from the candidates, who were unsuccessful in securing highest votes/seat in the assembly. He stated that general allegations had been levelled by all unsuccessful candidates, pertaining to alleged tampering in the official records at the close of poll.

He said that it had been alleged that the presiding officers, including the petitioners, had tampered with and issued fake and fabricated Forms-45 to returned candidates and had uploaded the same on the website of ECP.

Barrister Khan submitted that petitioners had been attending the inquiry proceedings before relevant committees constituted by ECP under Elections Act and had filed their replies etc as well.

To the utter surprise of the petitioners, they received the impugned notices from ACE on Aug 29 for attendance in preliminary inquiry of July 16, 2025 initiated on the complaint of Taimoor Saleem Khan Jhagra regarding alleged irregularities and misconduct by presiding officers and others during the polls, he said.

He said that the petitioners had been directed to appear before an assistant director of ACE for recording their statements in connection with the inquiry. The counsel stated that the petitioners appeared on the requisite date and recorded their statements.

He argued that the petitioners categorically informed the assistant director that they were on special election duty on the orders of ECP and as such their actions and any complaint pertaining thereto were to be dealt with under Elections Act. He said that ACE had no jurisdiction to inquire into any matter pertaining to elections.

He said that the official was also informed that complaints, having the same allegations, had already been filed by the same complainant before ECP that were pending adjudication under Elections Act.

He argued when ECP, a constitutional body, was already seized of the complaint regarding election-related allegations, any parallel inquiry by officials of ACE, an executive agency, on the same allegations fell outside the exclusive legal mandate established for election matters.

The counsel for Mr Jhagra referred to judgements of superior courts in support of his contention. He argued that once the election process was over, those presiding officers were in the domain of civil servants and were answerable for their deeds under efficiency and disciplinary rules.

He argued that there was incontrovertible evidence of tampering with Forms-45 that were issued by the presiding officers, and on the basis of the tampered forms some unsuccessful candidates had been declared as returned candidates.

ECP special secretary Mohammad Arshid said that the same allegations put forward by the complainants had already been raised in election petitions pending before election tribunals under Election Act.

Published in Dawn, October 16th, 2025