SHC sets aside CEC’s order on Qaim’s transfer plea

Karachi
The Sindh High Court set aside on Friday the chief election commissioner’s order that rejected Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah’s transfer of case application from the election tribunal in Karachi.
The court observed that chief election commissioner could not decide transfer applications singlehandedly.
The court sent the matter to back to the election commission to decide the transfer application again within 20 days.
The PS-29 Khairpur results were challenged by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Ghous Ali Shah.
The chief minister had submitted in the petition that the presiding officer of the election tribunal, Justice (retd) Zafar Ahmed Khan Sherwani, had mentioned his name in another matter of the NA-215 Khairpur constituency with mala fide intent and showed biasness towards him. The petitioner’s counsel, Farooq H Naek, submitted that after the 18th Constitutional Amendment, the word commissioner was substituted with commission under Article 219 of the Constitution.
He argued that chief election commissioner had no power to dismiss the transfer application on his own in the absence of four other members of the commission. The court was prayed to set aside the order and restrain the election tribunal from deciding the case of the petitioner until a verdict was reached in the case.
The PML-NN candidate’s counsel questioned the maintainability of the petition and submitted that no election to the house or the provincial assembly could be questioned except by an election petition presented to the election tribunal. They prayed to the court to dismiss the petition as not maintainable. They said no amendment was made under Section 58 of the Representation of People Act with regard to the powers of the commissioner.
An SHC division bench headed by Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar observed that under the Article 219 of the Constitution, the election commission was bound to appoint an election tribunal so that the transfer application could have been placed before the commission as it was done at the time of the passing of its interim order.
The court observed that in the absence of other members of the commission, the chief election commissioner could not decide the transfer application singlehandedly.
The court observed that at this moment, the appointing authority of the election tribunal was the election commission and not the commissioner alone therefore the powers of transfer also vested in the commission that were akin or ancillary and incidental to the main power of appointing an election tribunal.

Rangers discipline
The SHC directed the director general Rangers to ensure that his men should not disrepute the well-earned reputation of the force on account of their personal vendettas.
The direction came on a petition of Mohammad Yaqoob and others over registration of a false case and harassment by the personnel of Rangers against them on account of family dispute.
The court had constituted a committee to conduct an inquiry into the allegations by the petitioner against Yaqoob’s wife relative, a Rangers man namely Lance Naik Sultan Mehmood.
The division bench, headed by Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, observed that the inquiry committee, headed by Major Hammad Arif, exonerated the Rangers man Lance Naik Sultan Mehmood from harassment charges and it had failed to consider that dispute was between the petitioner and his wife, who happens to be Sultan Mehmood’s sister-in-law.
The court observed that the inquiry committee did not consider that the Rangers man got a false FIR registered against the petitioner by exploiting his official position, which was evident from the order of the judicial magistrate.
The court said that the judicial magistrate ‘s order reflected the involvement of the Rangers man as he had exploited his official position and was instrumental in registration of case against the petitioner, but the inquiry committee did not reprimanded him, proving that the inquiry against the Rangers man was merely an eyewash.
The court said that the petitioner has levelled very serious allegations against the Rangers personnel, saying he was detained at Hyderabad for two days when he proceeded to record his statement before the inquiry committee.