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SC suspends tribunal verdict to de-seat PML-N MNA, stays by-polls in NA-154
ABDUL SHAKOOR KHAN — UPDATED 12 MINUTES AGO
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Tuesday suspended the August 26 decision of an election tribunal to de-seat Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) candidate Muhammad Siddique Khan Baloch and the tribunal's order of re-election in the NA-154 (Lodhran-I) constituency.
Know more: Poll tribunal deseats another PML-N lawmaker
The PML-N lawmaker who contested the 2013 poll as an independent candidate and later joined the PML-N, was deseated when the tribunal set aside his election on a petition filed by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf's central organiser Jahangir Khan Tareen.
On Tuesday, a three-member bench headed by Justice Saqib Nisar had taken up the petition filed by Baloch in which he had asked the court to issue a stay order against the by-elections in NA-154 which were scheduled for Oct 11 this year.
Besides pointing out massive irregularities in the election, Multan tribunal judge Zahid Mehmood had disqualified Baloch for possessing bogus educational qualification and concealing facts, Dawn newspaperreported earlier.
Makhdoom Ali Khan, the counsel for PTI's Jahangir Tareen, during the hearing requested the court to not issue a stay order against the upcoming by-polls, saying that the apex court's decision on the appeal challenging the tribunal decision on NA-154 should be issued after the by-elections.
In response, Justice Nisar maintained that hundreds of thousands of rupees go into holding elections, hence if the decision on the appeal was issued after the by-polls, it could result in a big loss to the national kitty.
After hearing all arguments, the court issued a stay order against implementation of election tribunal's decision regarding NA-154 and subsequently reinstated Baloch as an MNA.
Baloch's election in NA-154 result was challenged by Jehangir Tareen — who had lost to Baloch — through an election petition filed under Section 52 of the Act, claiming that Baloch possessed fake secondary education, intermediate and undergraduate degrees and he committed illegal practices on polling day.
The Multan tribunal’s detailed judgment says the National Database and Registration Authority on its direction had reported that it failed to authenticate thumb impressions of 179 voters in NA-154.
According to the report, 218,056 votes polled at 290 stations were received by Nadra for verification, out of which 20,601 votes were cast with invalid Computerised National Identity Card numbers or without them.
Similarly, 121 voters were found to be out of constituency, while there were 728 duplicate votes and 587 votes were without thumb impressions, the report stated.
The Nadra report stated that there were 73,707 votes having authenticated fingerprints, while thumb impressions of only 179 votes could not be authenticated. Nadra, however, could not decipher 122,133 votes that had fingerprints of bad quality due to unavailability of proposed (magnetic) ink, besides other possibilities. However, the CNIC numbers mentioned on counterfoils of those votes were valid.
According to the ECP, Mr Baloch had bagged 86,177 votes against Mr Tareen’s 75,955 votes. There were 370,150 registered votes, of which 235,938 were polled. As many as 9,904 votes were rejected and the voting percentage was 67.4.
