LAHORE
A full bench of the Lahore High Court has ruled that candidates for local government elections can only pick their proposers and seconders from the same constituency in which the elections are being held.
The bench headed by Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah issued the ruling allowing five and dismissing 74 identical petitions filed against two conflicting decisions of two different single benches.
The bench took up two questions raised in the petitions-whether the proposer and secondor under rule 12(2) of the LG Election Rules must be from the constituency from where the candidate has been nominated-whether having a proposer or a secondor in the nomination paper from another constituency is a defect of substantial nature and cannot be remedied by the returning officer at the time of scrutiny under the rules.
After hearing arguments from all parties at length, the bench observes that statutory requirement of a proposer and a seconder to be from the same constituency is provided in rule 12 (2) of the LG Election Rules. The rules say any voter of a constituency may propose or second the name of any duly qualified person to be a candidate for an election of a member or, as the case may be, the chairman and the vice-chairman of that constituency.
The bench says the rule mandates that a voter must be from the same constituency from where the candidate is contesting elections.
This is both, an expression of confidence in favour of a candidate to represent the constituency and also an affirmation, that the electoral constituency is being represented, it adds.
It further says as elections are being held in a ward which is a delimited electoral area, to fill the seat of a general member, a ward is, therefore, a constituency and the proposer and the seconder must be from the same said ward/constituency for the nomination papers to meet the requirement of Rule 12(2).