ECP to move court against Punjab minister over forgery

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is preparing to file a complaint in the sessions court of Lahore next week against Senior Punjab Minister Aleem Khan under three charges --forgery, cheating and making false affidavits.

In a unanimous order, the ECP has directed its regional commissioner in Lahore to file the complaint against the minister. “We will forward the ECP order to the regional commissioner, who will prepare a complaint on its basis, and send it to us for vetting,” ECP spokesman Nadim Qasim told The News when contacted.

Meanwhile, Aleem Khan told The News through a senior public relations officer of the Punjab government from London where he currently is that he is going to challenge the ECP decision in the Lahore High Court (LHC) to get it reversed. “I will prove that justice was not done to me.”

The ECP spokesman said the legal wing of the ECP will examine the complaint and give the final go-ahead to the regional commissioner to submit it to the sessions’ court. “This process will take a couple of weeks.”

Nadim Qasim said that the complaint would undoubtedly be submitted to the sessions’ court because if it was the binding direction of the ECP.

Chief Election Commissioner Justice Sardar Muhammad Raza and the four ECP members on October 1 handed down the unanimous order, which, however, remained underreported in the media.

The order said: Written arguments already filed by the parties, perused and considered. For reasons separately recorded on acceptance of the petition, the regional election commissioner, Lahore, is directed to file a complaint against the respondent [Aleem Khan] in the court of sessions under sections 464 [making a false document], 468 [forgery for purpose of cheating] and 471 [using as genuine a forged document] of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) to take the follow up action.

The ECP issued the order on a petition filed by former National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq. It quoted an earlier ECP decision which it passed while rejecting Aleem Khan’s plea against Ayaz Sadiq: It has been observed by the ECP with serious concern that some affidavits filed by the petitioner [Aleem Khan] were absolutely false and hence the ECP reserves its authority/right to proceed against them in accordance with law after final decision by the tribunal concerned.”

After his unseating, Ayaz Sadiq had contested the by-election to NA-122 Lahore in October 2015 and was challenged by Aleem Khan. He had won.

Ayaz Sadiq gave to the ECP the details of 180 false affidavits, which had earlier been filed by Aleem Khan with his petition that had been dismissed by the ECP on February 1, 2016. The ECP accepted the ex-speaker’s plea and issued the order for filing the complaint against the minister in the sessions’ court.

The affidavits contained almost similar content which stated that in the May 2013 general elections, the deponents cast their votes in NA-122 in favour of the PTI, and that when they went to cast their votes for the PTI in the October 2015 by-poll, they found that their votes had been unlawfully transferred without their consent outside of this constituency.

According to Section 468, invoked by the ECP, says whoever commits forgery, intending that, the document forged shall be used for the purpose of cheating, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine.

Section 471 says whoever fraudulently or dishonestly uses as genuine any document which he knows or has reason to believe to be a forged document, shall be punished in the same manner as if he had forged such document.