Alleged errors in NA-122 judgment

ISLAMABAD: According to the legal advisers of Ayaz Sadiq key figures on the basis of which the judgement of NA-122 Election Tribunal is based are wrong and contrary to what was reported to the tribunal by a local commission by NADRA. They said whole 80-page judgement is based on different figures reported to the tribunal by the local commission, NADRA pre-scan report and NADRA report which all were already discussed in the media in detail. Media could not find out any sign of rigging or large scale irregularities, which could impact the election result, from these already disclosed figures.
They said the August 22 judgment penned down by Justice Kazim Malik disclosed only one new fact, Statement No-4, which was really startling for everyone, especially the PML-N. The paragraph No-4 of the judgement details the number of used counterfoils in polling stations, corresponding number of ballot papers counted at the end of polling and their difference. The judgement revealed that on certain polling stations, the number of ballot papers counted was much less than the used counterfoils and that this constitutes a major irregularity. As all other issues like handwriting mistakes and incomplete CNIC numbers were already discussed and were dismissed by experts, as total count of any possibly genuine cases was less than one thousand whereas victory margin was 9,000, so this new aspect in the judgement was revealing for everyone, especially in cases of polling station No-6 and polling station No-7.
First of all, the legal advisers said, if certain number of counterfoils is used on a polling station and the number of ballot papers recovered from ballot boxes is more than the used counterfoils, this is a case of rigging as it is clear that someone has used fake ballot papers and cast fake votes. There is not a single such case.
However, they said, the number of ballot papers can be less and it is a matter of routine. It cannot be interpreted as rigging by any way as in some cases ballot papers are damaged or wasted. However in case of polling station No-6, according to the judgement, the number of used counterfoils found from the election bags is 116, while total number of ballot papers counted towards the vote account of the contesting candidates is 10 and thus the judge gave the difference as 106 ballot papers which according to judgement mysteriously disappeared.
Similarly, they said, in case of polling station No-7, according to the judgement, the number of used counterfoils found from the election bags is 636, while total number of ballot papers counted towards the vote account of the contesting candidates is 34 and thus the judge mentioned the difference as 602 which is unbelievably high and missing of this number of ballot papers could be the biggest news of year 2013.
The judge, they said, explained this issue of less ballot papers in great details and clearly seems to have been relying on this part more than any other aspect of wrong or missing CNIC numbers because of handwriting mistakes etc in others parts of the judgement. However, not only the whole record of election is present but also reports of the local commission and NADAR reports are on record and decisive figures quoted by the judge are wrong.
The legal advisers of Ayaz Sadiq said, in case of polling station No-6, according to the report of the Local Commission constituted by the Election Tribunal itself, the number of used counterfoils was 1016 whereas total number of ballot papers counted at the end was 1010. There was a difference of 6 ballot papers only which means this number of ballot papers were damaged/destroyed by voters. When the NA-122 record was handed over to NADRA under the supervision of another commission again constituted by Tribunal itself, it found that total number of used counterfoils was 1018 and the counted ballot papers were 1010. Thus NADRA found a difference of 8 ballot papers. Both these reports are on record. The advisers said in case of polling station No-7, according to the report of the Local Commission, the number of used counterfoils was 636 whereas total number of ballot papers counted at the end of polling was 634. There was a difference of 2 ballot papers only. According to NADRA pre-scan report, the numbers of used counterfoils and counted ballot papers was the same as reflected in the report of Local Commission whereas the judgement shows this difference at 602. They said complete and detailed analysis of only these two polling stations in the judgement on the basis of wrong figures shows something seriously disturbing in the overall scheme of things and facts of the verdict. After quoting a judgement from the case law, presenting four possible situations and a detailed analysis this part is concluded with leveling of a serious allegation against the ECP officials in the following words: “However, I have been left with no option but to say that someone associated with the closed-door affairs (Election) committed the mischief”. These are not the only mistakes and there are many others which can be easily observed by the comparing judgement figures with the official record. The advisers said it is an internationally accepted principle that while maintaining or making huge database or manually entering or noting down figures millions of times, there are two to three percent chances of human error which can always be observed in any such case. The judgement fails to admit this though genuinely serious mistakes are much less than the victory margin. Polling staff has to manually note down 13-digit CNIC numbers in hundreds of thousands of cases in less than 9 hours, some 540 minutes. However, the judgement written with great care in weeks and months contains a number of mistakes. After Statement No-4, the judgement directly moves to Statement No-6, missing Statement No-5 which is a simple human mistake. In Statement No-7, the result is 315 votes higher, again a human error.
The advisers said it is not explained in the judgement that 255 cases of duplication of votes and 570 cases where voters registered in other constituencies voted in NA-122 (only 825 votes which can be considered as genuinely serious irregularity and not a mere mistake) could be the result of mistake of recording one or two digits which could have resulted in matching with CNIC number of some other body. NADRA has explained all these facts in its “Supplementary Report” which is completely rejected by the judge.
NADRA, they said, has explained that in all cases of wrong CNIC, incomplete CNICs, CNICs not issued by NADRA or CNICs registered in other constituencies, if one of two digits are recorded correctly, they make a correct CNIC number registered in NA-122. NADRA submitted this supplementary report as the judge showed inability to understand some facts narrated in NADRA’s original report. However some of its points were quoted out of context. Like in above example of mistake of writing one or two wrong digits in more than 80% cases, the judgment refers to cases where four or five digits were wrong but these cases were in negligibly low number and cases of one or two wrong digits were in thousands which was not mentioned.
The judgement, they said, also objected to NADRA system’s inability to examine around 93,000 votes. The same technical matter has been explained many times by experts and verification of manually captured thumb impressions on counterfoils or voting lists from NADRA database of digitally captured impressions was impossible. The judgement also discusses the magnetic ink issue though it has already been established that verification of manually captured impression was not possible no matter whatever ink was used and the only authentic way is to biometrically verify the thumb impressions which was not possible and is still not possible because of technical deficiencies of our system. The transparency of elections was not evaluated on the basis of thumb impressions in any past elections. If this logic is considered then votes polled for PTI in this constituency should also be considered fake. There were many other ways to evaluate rigging or irregularities, none of which was adopted. If there were so many wrong CNIC numbers, how many complaints of fake voters were made on the polling day? The answer is zero. Referring to a statement made by chairman NADRA on a technical issue, the judgement described it as “a self-styled and novel theory”. Chairman NADRA had simply explained that machines could not read every manually captured thumb impression and that only when any impression is read can NADRA give its opinion with full authenticity. He explained that under principles of probability, percentage of valid thumb impressions will be same among readable and unreadable impressions. Even if all the thumb impressions could not be read, no law provides to term such ballot papers or votes as fake. Measures to find out fake votes are explained in the law. The said the judgement only points out some irregularities or illegal practices and does not level any allegation of rigging against Sardar Ayaz Sadiq at any point but still declares the election void. Section 68(2) of the Representation of People Act, 1976 is relevant here and is self-explanatory: “The election of a returned candidate shall not be declared void on the ground — (a) that any corrupt or illegal practice has been committed, if the Tribunal is satisfied that it was not committed by, or with the consent or connivance of that candidate or his election agent and that the candidate and the election agent took all reasonable precaution to prevent its commission.”