ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court will begin on Monday (today) the hearing of an appeal filed by Qasim Khan Suri, who lost the post of vice president of the National Assembly after an electoral tribunal recently dismissed him.
Headed by Judge Umar Ata Bandial, a bank of three judges, which also includes Judge Faisal Arab and Judge Ijaz-ul-Ahsan, will take the appeal in which the engine has questioned the jurisdiction of the Electoral Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to dismiss him when he was not properly constituted, since the five-member commission had fewer than two members.
On September 27, the Electoral Tribunal, Quetta, declared void the election of Qasim Suri, a member of Pakistan's Tehreek-i-Insaf of Balochistan, and ordered re-election in NA-265 (Quetta-II).
Despite his dismissal by the electoral tribunal, the National Assembly website continues to show him as the vice president
Lashkari Raisani had contested the election of Suri, alleging fraud.
On Wednesday, the session of the National Assembly, which was scheduled to continue until Friday (October 4), was abruptly extended within a few minutes of its beginning. Opposition members claimed that the measure was aimed at avoiding the election for the vacant position of the vice president.
The extension of NA came hours after the ECP issued a notification of the overthrow of Suri.
Mr. Suri's appeal drafted by lead attorney Naeem Bokhari argued before the Supreme Court that the PCE did not have the constitutional composition to notify a returning candidate.
He argued that the appellant comes from a low-income middle class family, while his opponent Lashkari Raisani is immensely rich, well connected and extremely influential, since he is the brother of former Balochistan Prime Minister Aslam Raisani. Therefore, it is inconceivable that the appellant has been able to conspire with the voting staff on duty in the NA-265 constituency for their success as sustained by the court.
The conclusion of the electoral tribunal that there was a small difference in votes among rival candidates is contrary to the record since a difference of 5,585 votes is not small, the appeal argued, claiming that the conclusion reflects a bias on the part of the court.
In addition, the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) does not detect a large number of false votes. In addition, seeking support from a 2016 Supreme Court ruling on this matter was incorrect and inappropriate, as it was clearly distinguishable from the case in question, the appeal said.
He regretted that neither the violation of the 2017 Elections Law, nor any corrupt or illegal practice has been proven during court proceedings. Therefore, the conclusion of the court is completely unsustainable.
The appeal emphasized that any failure by Nadra or the ECP cannot be attributed remotely to the appellant, adding that the court in its verdict has not even applied Nadra's conclusion that suggested that the Automated Fingerprint Identification System ( AFIS)) found 49,042 fingerprints of sufficient quality and a total of zero fingerprints failed to authenticate.
This means that another person voted against the CNIC number mentioned in the used ballot matrix, Nadra report said. But the appeal held that this reflected some typo, since when the report already explained that the fingerprints failed in authentication, the report should have stated that "no one else" voted against the CNIC instead of saying "someone else" .
It is also clear that there was no evidence in the register to suggest which candidate or challenged candidates obtained the 52,756 votes, whose used buttresses AFIS considered of insufficient quality for the purposes of the automated machine.
In addition, the failure of the ECP to provide the ink necessary to decipher the fingerprints cannot be attributed to the appellant or to his success in the elections, he argued the appeal, adding that the absence of registration of 15 polling stations can also not be attributed to the appellant or Your success will be affected by your absence.
Similarly, Nadra's failure due to the lack of dispatch of the matrices of 17 polling stations could easily be rectified by directing her office. Therefore, the court's conclusion in this regard was completely conjectural and unsustainable, according to the appeal.
Interestingly, despite the overthrow of Qasim Suri by the PCE, the National Assembly website still shows him as the attached speaker of NA along with his photograph.
Posted on Dawn, October 7, 2019
Source: https://www.dawn.com/news/1509448/sc-begins-hearing-of-qasim-suris-appeal-today