ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court will take up the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP)’s plea against the Peshawar High Court (PHC)’s order to suspend the substitution of a returning officer (RO) for a provincial assembly constituency – PK-91 Kohat-II, on January 2, 2024.
A three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa, and comprising Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar and Justice Musarrat Hilali will hear the ECP’s appeal.
The Commission has prayed to the apex court to set aside the PHC’s impugned order as it amounts to derailing the election process having been passed right in the middle of the scrutiny of the nomination papers by the Returning Office, which is time-bound critical stage of the Election Programme.
It questioned whether the impugned order of the high court amounted to interfering with the constitutional and statutory public duties of the ECP concerning the appointment of ROs under Article 218(3), read with Section 51 of the Elections Act 2017, and as such no interim relief could be granted by the way of suspension of the ECP’s notification dated December 25, 2023, substituting the RO.
Whether the jurisdiction of courts is not barred under Section 236 of the Elections Act, 2017, the ECP questioned, adding as to whether the impugned order of the high court was liable to be set aside as it amounted to derailing the election process.
The ECP questioned whether the high court could suspend the ECP notification without first issuing notice to the ECP and without affording an opportunity to explain that there in fact existed a valid reason for substitution of the earlier notified returning officer with another official which was on medical grounds.
The ECP submitted that the candidates for an election did not have a vested right in their nomination papers scrutinised by a particular returning officer, furnishing them locus standi to invoke writ jurisdiction of the high court in that regard.
The electoral body contended that the high court should not have passed the impugned order in a writ petition that was filed in sheer conjuncture failing to allege any particular prejudice caused to the petitioners by the substitution of earlier RO.
The ECP prayed to the apex court that leave to appeal might be granted to it against the impugned order passed by the high court on December 27, 2023.
Dawood Shah and Imtiaz Shahid Qureshi, the aspiring candidates for the said constituency KP-91 Kohat-II, in their petitions before the PHC had contended that Assistant Commissioner (Headquarters) RO Muhammad Usman Ashraf had been substituted with Senior Assistant Director, Local Government and Rural Development Kohat, Irfanullah by the respondents, the ECP and others in violation of its own order dated December 13, 2023, through which ban on posting and transfer of district returning officers, returning officers for February 8 polls had been imposed.
The PHC held that the points raised needed elaborate consideration, hence notice be issued to respondents No 1 and 2 for January 4, 2024, to submit their para-wise comments.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023