Imran’s claim of rigging holds no water

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chief Imran Khan had been saying in his speeches that he wanted thorough scrutiny of record of four constituencies to prove that Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) had come to power through rigging and claims that he had taken three out of four wickets whereas as of now, his claim turned out to be untrue in three cases while the fourth is pending before the apex court.

Of the four constituencies which became topic of discussion in every of Imran’s talks, election in one constituency was declared null and void by the Supreme Court on the basis of fake degree of the winning candidate who won as an independent defeating PML-N and PTI candidates. No charges of rigging were proved in the court.

NA-154 is one of those four constituencies for which PTI had been demanding reopening of polling bags and complete scrutiny of polling record as the party believed that it was defeated through well-planned engineered and rigged elections in 2013. PTI had staged sit-ins at D-Chowk and later a judicial commission was constituted to probe rigging charges.

The commission comprising the then Chief Justice of Supreme Court and two other apex court judges however had set aside all rigging charges. Siddique Baloch, an independent candidate has defeated Jahangir Tareen of PTI and Muslim League Nawaz came at number three in the 2013 election. Later Baloch joined PML-N. After his degree turned out to be fake, re-election was announced in the constituency and PML-N which came at number three in 2013 came at second position in the by-election while PTI won the seat.

The second wicket which Imran Khan claimed to have taken is NA-122 where Sardar Ayaz Sadiq had defeated Imran Khan in 2013. The Election Tribunal declared the election null and void mainly on the basis of technical grounds and irregularities committed by the election staff. Imran Khan’s claim that results were manipulated through rigging could not be proved in the court. Tribunal judgment ordered re-polling because the election machinery was materially affected by irregularities of officials. Sardar Ayaz Sadiq decided to go to re-election and again came out victorious. His appeal against the Election Tribunal’s decision in the Supreme Court is still pending.

The case of NA-125 is very interesting where Khawaja Saad Rafique of PML-N had beaten Hamid Khan of PTI. The judgment passed by the Election Tribunal though ordered re-election in the constituency but found no evidence of rigging and instead found out many evidence that polling at majority of the places was transparent. A visit of the office of Returning Officer (RO) by the PTI candidate Hamid Khan 3 days before the election day to successfully get the polling staff of 40 polling stations changed was the main reason of declaring the election null and void.

The polling staff can be changed only 15 days before the polling day while the Hamid Khan managed to change to simply three days before the polling day in violation of rules and judge considered this irregularity so huge that mentioned it four times in the judgment and made it one of the basis of declaring the whole election void along with some other minor irregularities.

However, while mentioning these a few irregularities, the judges at each and every point considered it important to mention repeatedly that neither the returned candidate Saad Rafique nor any of his election or polling agents was responsible for any of these irregularities. He initially held polling staff responsible for this negligence but later declared that even most of these problems are caused because of poor planning and bad system and low quality of polling materials and small size of polling bags and suggested measures to correct them in future. He mentioned that these examples of negligence did not constitute charge of rigging and rejected all allegations leveled by petitioner. The judgment shows that judge worked very hard to probe the allegations leveled by Hamid Khan and declared each and every of the 14 allegation as wrong by himself tabulating data and compiling and consolidating different evidence. The judge repeatedly complained that petitioner failed to provide evidence of allegations, presenting doubtful witnesses, fake affidavits. Khawaja Saad Rafique challenged the judgment in the Supreme Court and the case is pending there.

The fourth wicket is NA-110 Sialkot where Usman Dar of PTI lost to Khawaja Asif of PML-N, the Election Tribunal wrote in its judgment: “The way the petitioner (PTI candidate) avoided to enter the witness box and disregarded the directions of this tribunal on the pretext of business tour abroad, provides a basis to infer that he was/is no more interested in the matter. Costs of adjournments to the tune of Rs30,000 have not been paid by the petitioner till date. It appears that after filing the election petition, the petitioner lost interest in the election dispute and then attempted to prolong the trial … the petitioner failed to prove the allegations … (and) the election petition is found to be without any merit and is accordingly dismissed.” According to FAFEN, the number of electoral violations in NA-110 is zero while the electoral violations in NA-1 from where Imran Khan won were noticed at 58. The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed Usman Dar’s appeal against Khawaja Asif.