The Lahore High Court on Wednesday sought replies from Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and others by February 20 in a petition challenging process of the scrutiny of candidates for upcoming Senate election. The petitioner Azhar Siddique, advocate has questioned the scrutiny of nomination papers of Rana Maqbool, Shaheen Khalid Butt, Sadia Abbasi, Nuzhat Sadiq, Mushahid Hussain, Zubair Gull, Ahmad Saeed Kirmani and Hafiz Abdul Karim of PML-N besides Ch Muhammad Sarwar of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf.
Azhar argued that the election commission accepted nomination of those candidates who had been in service of Pakistan and possessed dual nationality and failed to hold proper scrutiny in a transparent manner. The petitioner also questioned "The Election Act 2017" and argued that the ECP was not bound to implement the amendments introduced under the act in virtue with Article 218(3) of the Constitution.
He pleaded that if the elections were not stayed the constitutional provisions would be negated and violated the settled principles of law. He alleged that all the parties in the parliament with mala fide intention, collusively and cleverly ensured non-disclosure of essential details in the nomination forms to be used in the forthcoming elections.
The lawyer pleaded that the disclosure of the said requirements was constitutional obligation and could not be waived or relaxed under the impugned Election Act, 2017. He, therefore, prayed the court to set aside the scrutiny process of senate election till removal of errors in the Election Act, 2017.
Comments
Comments are closed.