Candidate won polls without being registered as voter

ISLAMABAD: It is not fiction but a fact. A candidate in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa contested the local bodies elections with the consent of the Election Commission of Pakistan when he himself was not registered as a voter.
Shahab Uddin Shahab won with a narrow margin in the May elections, took oath three months later and only then submitted an application for his registration as a voter that was readily accepted by the ECP.
Muhammad Roshan, the runner-up who lost with seven votes, approached the ECP only to hear to move the election tribunal for redressal of his grievance.
Shahab, the winner in tehsil council elections from District Karak, had declared in nomination papers he was a registered voter but he was not. He had mentioned his serial number in the voters list of 2015 duly verified by the district election commissioner. Upon inquiry, it was determined that there was no name registered against that number.
Instead, the list indicated that the name of the voter bearing serial number 335 claimed by Shahab had been either removed or transferred to any other place under Article 18 of the Electoral Rules Act 1974.
Examination of the documents by The News found that his name was struck from the voters list due to the blockade of Computerized National Identity Card as there were two CNICs registered in his name.
How was he allowed to participate in the election without being a registered voter remains a question subject to different justifications being offered at the official level.
An ECP official at headquarters who dealt with the local bodies elections in the KP, Rashid Bhatti, said the legal section would be in a better position to explain. However, a letter dated August 11 from the legal section to the complainant, Roshan Khan, (who had written to the chief election commissioner) advised him “to approach the learned Election Tribunal for redressal of grievances, if so advised.”
Haleemullah Khan, who was the Assistant Returning Officer in Karak during the elections, confirmed to The News that Shahab’s CNIC was blocked by the NADRA, resulting in non-registration in the voters list of 2015. Shahab had moved the court against NADRA to secure a decree for the restoration of his one CNIC, said Haleemullah who is the other sub-divisional education officer in Karak.
His papers were accepted on the intervention of the district election commissioner with an undertaking that he will be scrutinised if objected by any contesting candidate, he said.
Roshan got wind of the matter only after the elections and moved the additional sessions judge who questioned as to why this issue was not raised by the complainant during the course of scrutiny, Haleemullah said. Asked if object is time-barred, he said he was not aware of the legal side and it can only be explained by the court.
Shahab, when approached by The News, said he was removed from the voters list due to the CNIC issue. He was reluctant to speak further unless this correspondent met him in person in his hometown.
Roshan, narrating his side of the story, said that the reality dawned on him only after he decided to challenge Shahab’s victory that, he alleged, was engineered.
Shahab secured 871 and Roshan 864 votes. The latter moved the district court praying for a recount and later objected to this process on the grounds that Shahab’s brother also participated in the re-counting of votes.