There is no truth in the comments made against the facts regarding the Chief Election Commissioner’s meeting with the Speaker of the Punjab Assembly, the Election Commission has said.
Islamabad: The Election Commission has said in a statement that the allegations against the Chief Election Commissioner are baseless, and many PTI leaders have also been meeting him.
The statement said that some vested interests and groups keep making baseless allegations against the Election Commission, the Chief Election Commissioner and members and are busy with misleading propaganda.
The Election Commission further said that it is important to make it clear here that the Election Commission, the Chief Election Commissioner and members take every decision without considering anyone’s wishes, in accordance with the constitution and law, and do not come under any kind of pressure or blackmail, nor will they be intimidated by these low-level tactics.
According to the statement, there is no truth in the comments made against the facts regarding the recent meeting of the Chief Election Commissioner with the Speaker of the Punjab Assembly. Many constitutional and administrative officials keep meeting the Election Commission at different times in connection with official matters.
The Chief Election Commissioner and the members of the Commission have had several meetings with former President Arif Alvi, and the Chief Election Commissioner has been a participant in meetings, especially regarding EVM and internet voting, which do not even fall within the mandate of the President.
Moreover, the Chief Election Commissioner has been meeting several PTI leaders at their request, including Vice Chairman PTI Shah Mehmood Qureshi, then General Secretary Asad Umar, Pervez Khattak, and Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mahmood Khan.
Similarly, the Chief Election Commissioner also met the then Chief Minister Punjab Usman Buzdar at the Chief Minister’s office on some issues. The members of the Election Commission have also been meeting the rest of the Chief Ministers in connection with the performance of official duties.
The statement said that was it right then and is wrong now. No official of the Election Commission has met any personality for any personal work or in a personal capacity. It is not against the rules for politicians and political parties to approach the Election Commission in any way.
According to the Election Commission’s announcement, Sahibzada Muhammad Hamid Raza’s allegation that the Returning Officer did not declare him a candidate of the Sunni Ittehad Council is completely false. The real truth is that he wrote his affiliation with the Sunni Ittehad Council Alliance PTI on his nomination papers, while under Section 215 (2) and Rule 162 (2) of the Elections Act, both the parties (PTI and Sunni Ittehad Council) neither applied for an alliance nor asked the Election Commission to give him a symbol.
The declaration that he submitted with his nomination papers was of the PTI ideology (PTI-N) and he did not submit the ticket of the above-mentioned party along with it. The Returning Officer gave him the symbol of the minaret as an independent candidate under the rules.
If Sahibzada Muhammad Hamid Raza’s appointment is as accurate as this, he would have at least put his own party’s ticket on the nomination papers and said that he was a candidate of the Sunni Ittehad Council. In addition, when the Election Commission asked the Sunni Ittehad Council how many women candidates it had nominated under Section 206 of the Elections Act, Sahibzada Hamid Raza informed the Election Commission in writing with his signatures that no candidate had contested the election on the Sunni Ittehad Council ticket in the general election 2024. Therefore, the question of giving a list of women candidates does not arise.
