highly emotional language.
Malik said his conscience answered all these questions in negative. Hence he felt that time has come to speak out bitter truth in utter disregard of the doctrine of necessity cum expediency. Before adverting to scrutiny and analysis of the election record with full application of legal and judicial mind, he wrote, he seeks refuge with the might of Allah Almighty.
After his retirement from the subordinate judiciary, Malik was once appointed as the Director General of the Anti-Corruption Establishment by the previous Shahbaz Sharif government.
As per the law, he, like other judges of the tribunals, was appointed to this position by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), which it does after every parliamentary poll.
The judge rejected the supplementary/explanatory note regarding the pre-scanning report of the National Database & Registration Authority (Nadra) chairman what Malik described as the ‘novel theory of statistical expectation’. He absolutely excluded this report from consideration and concluded on the basis of original scanning report of the Nadra.
He wrote that it was manifest from the system generated scanning report of Nadra that Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) numbers mentioned in 6123 used counterfoils had never been issued by it. On reconsideration, the Nadra chairman introduced ‘self-styled and novel theory of statistical expectation’ to the effect that the members of polling staff and the data entry operators of Nadra might have written incorrect CNIC numbers inadvertently.
The judge said that he has minutely gone through the explanatory note wherein not a single human error by data entry operators of Nadra has been pointed out. Secondly, the election was conducted by the members of polling staff under the supervision of District Returning Officer (DRO) and RO. The Nadra chairman or any other official of his organisation had not been associated with the election.
According to the ruling, the Nadra was required to make a record based report. It was beyond its allotted sphere to make conjectures that the members of polling staff might have noted down wrong numbers of CNIC on the counterfoils on the polling day.
It said the tribunal is under legal obligation to decide the election dispute on the basis of legal and cogent evidence. It is not supposed to attach any importance to the conjectural/concessional theory of statistical expectation brought of the Nadra chairman.
Thirdly, the judgment said, the Nadra chairman did not know what had happened on the polling day, so he should not have theorised without any factual and legal basis that the members of polling staff might have written wrong CNIC numbers on the counterfoils. The theory of statistical expectation is also offensive to the record itself.
The judge also wrote that if the omission on the part of Presiding Officer or Assistant Presiding Officer is not considered as fatal to the election process, even then it could be safely said that the polling staff did not perform the legal obligations carefully. He also concluded that the RO did not discharge his legal obligation.