SC rejects Marwat's appeal, orders re-election in Karachi's PS-114

ISLAMABAD: Supreme Court of Pakistan on Thursday rejected an appeal filed by Irfanullah Marwat of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and upheld election tribunal verdict of holding re-election in Sindh Assembly constituency PS-114 in Karachi, ARY News reported.

Justice Ijaz ul Ahsan of the top court bench announced the verdict in the case.

It is worth mentioning here that PML-N candidate Irfanullah Marwat had won the PS-114 seat in general elections held in 2013 by defeating Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) candidate Rauf Siddiqui.

Siddiqui had challenged the results of elections in the constituency claiming bogus votes and irregularities before the election tribunal and sought verification of the votes to dig out illegalities during the election process.

Upon his request, the tribunal had directed the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) to carry out verification of 92,731 votes polled in the constituency.

NADRA’s report disclosed that 17,504 of the polled votes were bogus as they were either cast by someone else or had invalid national identity card numbers.

The report further revealed that 378 unregistered votes found in the constituency were polled at polling stations number 53, 22 and 79. There were 792 duplicate votes polled by 1,602 voters.

One such voter Bibi Jameela, daughter of Gul Muhammad, resident of Mehmoodabad Karachi, had polled her vote five times at the polling station number 66.

The report further disclosed that a total of 3,270 votes failed authentication, which means that someone else had voted against the ID number mentioned on the used counterfoil.

After the NADRA report, the tribunal declared the elections in the constituency as void and directed its office to communicate the judgment to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to a issue a notification in this regard.

Marwat filed an appeal against the election tribunal’s decision at Supreme Court. The apex court bench earlier reserved the verdict over the matter, which was announced to upheld the tribunal’s decision.