PESHAWAR: A single-member Peshawar High Court bench has issued a stay order temporarily stopping the Election Commission of Pakistan from notifying the Jamaat-i-Islami candidate’s victory in the recent by-elections for a tehsil council seat from Shahikhel area in Lower Dir district over the alleged exclusion of women, reported leading English daily Dawn.
Justice Arshad Ali issued notices to the respondents, including the chief election commissioner, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial election commissioner and the successful candidate, Gul Hakeem Khan, asking them to file written replies to the petition against the alleged denial of voting right to women in the December 21 by-polls.
The bench fixed the next hearing on December 29 into the petition jointly filed by by-election candidates Inayatur Rehman, Dilawar Khan, Manzoor Ahmad, Fazal Wahab and Hisamuddin, and women voters Bakhtmina, Baitul Miraj, Haseen Zeba, Khaest Begum and Miraj Bibi.
It also asked the ECP not to notify the winning candidate’s name until the next hearing.
The petitioners’ counsel, Muzzamil Khan, said that the entire by-election was manipulated as the winning candidate and his party did intense corruption and rigging. He alleged that pre-poll rigging had been done by finance minister Muzaffar Said.
Furthermore, Khan also claimed that on the day of polling when women voters came to the polling station, only two of them managed to make their way inside, whereas other women were barred from entering. He added that the two women who did make their way inside were detained for some time before being allowed out.
He added that the doors of polling stations were closed by local nazim Fazal Qadir and Jamaat candidate Gul Hakim.
He said Section 9 of that law provided that if the turnout of women voters was less than 10 per cent of the total votes polled during elections in a constituency, the Election Commission of Pakistan might presume that women voters were restrained from casting votes through an agreement and therefore, it might declare polling at one or more polling stations or across the constituency void.
The lawyer Gul Hakim of the Jamaat-i-Islami was actively involved in stopping women voters through his agents along with the nazim of Shahikhel and local administration and that as such, he had practically manipulated votes inside the polling station, which warranted the high court’s intervention for necessary action.