A petition seeking postponement of the presidential elections has been filed in the Supreme Court here on Monday. It said that the proposed presidential election would be void because of incomplete electoral college. The petition was filed by Advocate Hashmat Habib, president of 'Save Judiciary Movement'.
The petitioner said that under Article 50 of the Constitution, the parliament consists of the President, the National Assembly, and the Senate. But, currently, there is no 'President' as after the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf, the acting president did not take oath prescribed for assuming the office. The members of parliament "cannot act as proposers and seconders for a presidential candidate" unless the parliament's quorum was complete, the petition said.
The electoral college would remain incomplete until the acting president took oath provided for the president to be elected under Article 41(3), said the petitioner. Earlier, the petitioner had filed a petition on the same issue with the Election Commission of Pakistan, which was dismissed.
The Chief Election Commissioner had termed the petition 'misconceived', and had said that its contentions had no merit. In his order, the Chief Election Commissioner observed that it had been firmly settled that the Senate chairman, while acting as president, was not required to take oath prescribed for the office of president and his previous oath was sufficient for performing functions as acting president.
He also cited the judgement in the Syed Zafar Ali Shah vs the federal government case and another (1994 CLC 5) in which it was held: "Our Constitution did not contemplate a separate fresh oath ... for the office of president by the chairman of the Senate or the speaker of the National Assembly, as the case may be, on being called upon to act as or perform the functions of the president on account of the occurrence of a vacancy in the office of the president instead. It already binds them in the prescribed oath that when they were called upon to act or perform the functions of the president, they shall discharge their respective oaths already taken by them."