SHC reserves order on petition of PTI candidate against Qayyumabad result

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Thursday reserved its order on a petition filed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) candidate in the Union Committee (UC) 1 Qayyumabad of Korangi Town challenging the election results issued by the returning officer of the constituency.

Petitioner Shamshad Khan had submitted in the petition that he had contested the election for the post of chairman of the UC and obtained highest votes from the constituency as per the form 11 issued by the presiding officers.

He submitted that the returning officer on January 16 issued the provisional result for the constituency by wrongly counting the votes contrary to the form 11 issued by the presiding officers of the polling stations and showed the candidate of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz as the returning candidate who had got much less votes than the petitioner.

The counsel for the petitioner submitted that the total number of votes polled were shown to be 7,833, whereas, when the numbers of votes obtained by all the contesting candidates were summed, they were 8,778 in total.

He submitted that the returning officer (RO) should be directed to issue verified results after removing the errors from the provisional certificate. The court was requested to direct the RO to calculate the polled votes as per form 11 issued by the presiding officers of the polling stations, and formulate and issue a fresh result of UC-I Korangi after cancelling the provisional result.

A division bench headed by Chief Justice Ahmed Ali M Sheikh after hearing the arguments of the counsel reserved the order. Meanwhile, the SHC dismissed a petition filed by the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) candidate for re-polling in the UC-7 Shanti Nagar in Gulshan Town, directing him to approach the election tribunal.

Petitioner Ghulam Mustafa had challenged the results of two polling stations of the UC-7 submitting that the rival PPP’s candidate had rigged the election with the connivance of polling staff by adding bogus votes. The high court observed that the petitioner should approach the forum of election tribunal as the matter related to factual controversy.