ROs should exercise discretionary powers carefully: SC

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has said a returning officer should exercise the discretionary powers available to him in a rational and meticulous manner.

As the alleged massive rigging in the recent general elections held on February 8 is widely criticized and the Election Commission of Pakistan’s role is being questioned, the Supreme Court has issued an important judgment on the role of returning officers (ROs).

A three-member SC bench, headed by Justice Munib Akhtar and comprising Justice Shahid Waheed and Justice Irfan Saadat Khan, issued a detailed judgment in a petition challenging a verdict of the Lahore High Court.

“Returning officers are an integral part of the electoral process and it is highly unbecoming of a returning officer to exercise the authority conferred upon him or her in a manner which sabotages the electoral process,” says the detailed judgment authored by Justice Irfan Saadat Khan.

The court observed that returning officers must remember that it was a fundamental right of an individual to contest elections and if they sabotaged an individual, not only do they rob the individual of their fundamental right but also rob the populace at large of voting for that individual, which was also a fundamental right protected by the Constitution.

Elections are the bedrock of a democracy. Therefore, it is essential that those wishing to contest elections be facilitated as far as legally permissible. “It goes without saying that it is against democratic norms and principles to add technical bottlenecks in the way of any individual, who is a citizen of this country, trying to contest elections,” said the judgment, adding that electoral laws and rules could not be used as an arbitrary filtering mechanism dependent on the whims of a returning officer. The court, therefore, said a returning officer should exercise the discretionary powers available to him in a rational and meticulous manner.

“There is nothing on the record to suggest that the ‘joint bank account’ which is at the forefront of the list before us was not being exclusively used by the petitioner and his wife,” said the detailed judgment. It added that when the legislature had already mandated that the declaration required for nomination for election would be that of opening an exclusive bank account or dedicating an existing bank account, it was beyond the legislative competence of the ECP to require that such a bank account would not be a joint signatory account.

“At this juncture, it is quite clear to us that the legislature did not envision such a bifurcation and therefore the proviso added by the ECP (and that too a mere eight days prior to the date of filing nomination papers) is a violation and beyond the scope of its parent statute,” said the judgment.