Papers rejection rate isn’t too different from past polls, but party-wise data, reasons needed

KARACHI: The percentage of rejections by returning officers of nomination papers for the general elections is not extraordinarily high when compared with previous elections, say electoral experts. However, they say that a conclusive opinion cannot be formed without more data from the ECP such as the party-wise rejection rate as well as the reasons recorded for the rejections.

On Monday, the ECP released data related to the number of candidates who filed nomination papers for the 2024 general elections, and how many of the papers were accepted and rejected by the electoral body. In total, 3240 nomination papers have been rejected by the ROs for both the national and provincial assembly seats.

When asked how he sees this figure, PILDAT President Ahmed Bilal Mehboob tells The News that one would need to see past figures first for context. He says that historically, “in 2002, the rejection percentage was 8.44 per cent; in 2008: 7.22 per cent; in 2013: 14.60 per cent; in 2018: 10.49 per cent, and now in 2024 it is 12.34 per cent. When you look at this data you see that the current rate of rejection is in the same ballpark. This is not an extraordinarily high figure. There have been higher rates in the past. This figure is somewhere in the middle.”

Mehboob says that the most important thing is: “How many were rejected within specific political parties? Until we know this, we can’t form a conclusive opinion on the matter. It will make more sense if we can compare the party-wise rejection rate of nomination papers.”

For Mehboob, “the redeeming feature in this could be that appeals will be filed against the rejections and those will be heard by tribunals till January 10. My sense is that if something is blatantly wrong that will be reversed -- though that is to be seen.”

It may be noted that those whose nomination papers were rejected have the right to appeal the ECP decision by tomorrow (January 3). Their appeals will be decided by the ECP’s Appellate Tribunal by January 10.

On Monday, the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) also released a press statement, asking the ECP to publish the decisions of the ROs regarding “objections to [the] nomination of candidates and rejections of nomination papers on its website, which will contribute towards a more informed discourse and strengthen electoral transparency.”

Talking to The News, Director Programs at the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) Muddassir Rizvi also says that the rejection percentage right now is “not at all unprecedented. The rejections in the past were somewhat similar so this is not unprecedented”. He adds that the debate as it currently stands is not looking at the merit and demerit of rejections. “People are only talking about how nomination papers have been rejected. But the thing is that there is no discretionary space for ROs to reject nomination papers. So they always have a basis on which they reject and that basis is defined very clearly in the law.”

Rizvi cites the Election Act, 2017’s Section 62(9) in this case, which lays down what basis the ROs can form to reject a nomination paper. He explains that “rejections are made on defects that are not remedial, not defects that can be remedied immediately.”

Making a case for why Fafen has asked the ECP to publish the ROs’ decisions, Rizvi reasons that: “We don’t even know the objective basis of any rejection; we are just arguing that papers have been rejected.”

According to Rizvi, “Section 62(11) of the Elections Act requires the ROs to endorse their decision on each nomination paper and record brief reasons for their decisions. These are the reasons we need to look at. At least then our debate would be more informed. How can we debate the merit of a rejection without knowing why the rejection was done in the first place?” He adds that if the reasons given for the rejection were incorrect then the law even allows for action to be taken against the ROs.

Former ECP secretary Kanwar Dilshad has a somewhat different take on one aspect of this situation. According to Dilshad, “these were unusual rejections.” But for him, the bigger issue is that “the ROs didn’t study the election laws properly.” Calling this his “non-partisan opinion, despite being part of the caretaker Punjab setup”, he adds that in his view the ROs neither studied the election laws properly nor “used their wisdom properly nor were they much interested in their training for the electoral process.”

Dilshad also sees, like Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, the appellate process as a redeeming feature: “This can be resolved once this goes into the tribunals, which will probably reverse a lot of the rejections.”

But he cautions that if the papers were rejected of those who are “deemed defaulters or are involved in money-laundering or corruption then those rejections would be OK.” As an example of a valid rejection, Dilshad says that according to the ECP’s laws, a candidate’s proposer and seconder are to be from the same constituency. “If they are not and this is why the RO rejected the nomination papers then s/he did the right thing.” Dilshad adds that perhaps the CEC could also “take notice of the number of rejections taken this time by the ROs.”