Judges intend to finish vote fraud probe this week

Head of the judicial commission enquiring into the allegations of rigging in 2013 general elections, Chief Justice Nasirul Mulk on Monday said that all enquiries will be completed in the current week.

While hearing the enquiry into the electoral rigging, the commission rejected the request of Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q), and asked it to present its witnesses on June 9, 2015. The commission also asked Jamaat-e-Islami to give a list of its witnesses in the case.

Despite clear directives of the judicial commission, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) failed to submit Form 15 for all the constituencies in the country.

The commission has completed cross-questioning ECP Additional Secretary, Dr Sher Afgan Niazi. During the hearing, he said that FAFEN had reported a 100 per cent voting ratio in 49 constituencies of the country. However, the report did not hold weight when the ECP verified Form 14. According to this form, the voting ratio was between 45 and 48 per cent.

Niazi said that they had a meeting with officials of FAFEN and shared the finding of the enquiry report.

In reply to a question by Advocate Salman Akram Raja, the additional secretary said he had completed the report based on all reports sent forth by the ECP. .

Counsel for PML-N, Shahid Hamid, pointed out some letters on which Hafeez Pirzada raised objections.  The court asked Pirzada to let the cross questioning complete, as he will also be given a turn. Shahid Hamid asked about pending applications of different national and provincial constituencies.

The additional secretary replied to the question posed by the PML-N counsel saying the all the polling schemes were made as per the NADRA list. He said these lists have all the information, including data on the federation, provinces and FATA.

Sher Afgan Niazi told the counsel of the ruling party that the commission had uploaded the research report on its website but received no feedback. He also said that they had provided the best training to the 650,000 people that were hired for services in the general elections in 19,000 sessions.

In reply to a question posed by Shahid Hamid about the first unconfirmed result of the polling, the additional secretary said that they received first result at 12:30am. He also informed the commission that around 55 million people used the 8300 service to confirm their vote.

Pirzada asked what was received by the commission from the ROs after the Election Day. On which, Additional Secretary Sher Afgan Niazi said that the ECP received Form 16, 17 besides unconfirmed results of the polling.

He further said Provincial Election Commissioner directly informs the Printing Press, and the Election Commission of Pakistan was being informed in this regard. He also said that the commission had set up a result-receiving centre that deals with the results of the polling.

The commission adjourned the hearing until June 9.