Expats vote right: SC registrar returns Sheikh Rashid’s petition with objections

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) registrar’s office has returned a petition submitted by Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, seeking direction to the federal government to allow the overseas Pakistanis to cast their votes in the next general election.

The former interior minister had filed a petition in the SC under Article 184(3) of the Constitution, making the Federation of Pakistan, Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, Ministry of Law & Justice, and Election Commission of Pakistan as respondents.

He prayed to the apex court to declare the amendment to Section 94 of the Elections Act, 2017 (Act XXXIII of 2017) vide Section 3 of the Elections (Amendment) Act, 2022 (Act X of 2022) as unconstitutional and void ab initio.

The registrar’s office, however, returned the petition by raising objections, stating the petition had not pointed out as to what questions of public importance in the instant case were involved with reference to enforcement of any of the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution so as to directly invoking jurisdiction of the Supreme Court under Article 184(3) of the Constitution.

The registrar’s office stated that the petitioner had not approached any other appropriate forum available under the law for the same relief and had also not provided any justification for not doing so.

In his petition, Sh Rashid had submitted that the real strength of Pakistan were those who were living abroad and currently the numeric strength of overseas Pakistanis was approximately nine million.

He stated that overseas Pakistanis constitute the sixth largest faction of population in the world. In the year 2021 alone, overseas Pakistanis sent remittances to the tune of US$33 billion.