By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: A high court on Monday suspended the election victories of three candidates for the National Assembly from the party of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, pending further scrutiny by the election commission.
The Islamabad High Court said it was acting on complaints filed by rival candidates who alleged vote fraud and irregularities in the Feb. 8 national election, which was widely denounced by the opposition as rigged in favor of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz party.
The suspended candidates included two from Sharif’s PML-N, Tariq Fazl Chaudhry and Anjum Aqeel, and an independent, Raja Khurram Nawaz, who had announced his plan to join the PML-N after winning his seat.
The court said it was not halting the election commission’s proceedings on the challenges against the candidates, but it ordered the commission to refrain from issuing official notifications of their victories until the disputes were resolved. The court set Feb. 22 as the date for the next hearing.
The election commission had already issued provisional notifications of the candidates’ wins, but those were challenged by independent candidates backed by former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party.
One of the challengers, Ali Bukhari, said he and his fellow petitioners would present evidence of their claims to the election commission on Tuesday.
“We will request them to issue the result as per Form 45,” he said, referring to the document that records the votes cast at each polling station and is given to the candidates or their representatives.
Aqeel, one of the suspended PML-N candidates, expressed confidence that he would eventually be declared the winner.
“We have no issue with the election commission rechecking all the constituency results,” he said. “We have won this election by a significant margin and are not afraid of anything.”
The elections, held on Feb. 8, failed to produce a clear winner, as independent candidates, most of them loyal to Khan, won the most seats in the 266-member National Assembly, followed by the parties of Sharif and former president Asif Ali Zardari.
But Khan’s PTI, which had faced a series of obstacles before the polls, including a ban on its rallies, the removal of its party symbol and the disqualification of dozens of its candidates, claimed that it had been robbed of victory in dozens of constituencies, where it alleged that the results were delayed, manipulated or rigged.
The PTI’s allegations came amid mounting criticism from domestic and international observers, who raised concerns over the transparency and credibility of the elections, which were disrupted by a day-long suspension of cellular services, the detention of political activists, and reports of violence and terror threats.
The controversy over the election results has plunged Pakistan into a political crisis and raised doubts about the legitimacy of the next government, which is expected to be formed by Sharif’s party with the support of Zardari’s PPP and some smaller parties.
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