Islamabad (July 31, 2018): The Election Commission of Pakistan on Tuesday rejected demand of some political parties for the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner.
Addressing a news conference in Islamabad, Secretary Election Commission Babar Yaqoob said that all parties were provided level playing field and general elections 2018 were free and fair.
He urged the candidates to pursue legal framework for their grievances.
Babar Yaqoob said at the instance of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s the ECP requested the National Accountability Bureau not to arrest political leaders till polls.
He said the Commission decided to postpone polls in NA-60, Rawalpindi constituency after conviction and disqualification of PML-N candidate Hanif Abbasi.
He said winning and losing candidates should respect people’s mandate to strengthen democracy.
He said the Commission has sought explanations about delay of results from District Returning Officers and provincial election commissioners.
On the other hand, according to the ECP as many as 142 applications have been received by them for reopening of the constituencies.
The election commission of Pakistan has written a letter to Provincial Election Commissioners of Sindh and KP in this regard.
ECP To Start Uploading Form 45 on Website From Today
As the controversy over Form-45 continues to simmer, the Election Commission of Pakistan has decided to upload the forms containing key data of polling stations on its website from today.
“It is a requirement of the law and we will fulfil it in the next three days instead of waiting for the last day,” an ECP official said.
ECP said that that it has received the form 45 of more than 400 constituencies and will start uploading from tomorrow, Tuesday.
Form-45 contains essential data of each polling station of a constituency of the National Assembly or a provincial assembly.
For the first time in the country’s electoral history, the form provides gender-wise disaggregated data of votes cast at a polling station. The form is also supposed to list names of contesting candidates, the number of valid votes polled in favour of each candidate, number of valid tendered votes polled in favour of each candidate, number of valid challenged votes polled in favour of each candidate, total number of valid votes polled in favour of each candidate and number of votes excluded from the count.
The ECP official referred to Section 95 (8) of the Elections Act-2017. It reads: “The Returning Officer shall, within 24 hours after the consolidation proceedings, send to the Commission signed copies of the consolidated statement of the results of the count and final consolidated result together with results of the count and the ballot paper account, as received from the Presiding Officers, and shall retain copies of these documents for record.”
He said that under Section 95 (10), the ECP was required to place within 14 days from the poling day the documents received from returning officers on its website.
Since polling day, a majority of political parties have been alleging that presiding officers did not provide Form-45 to their candidates and polling agents.
“Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) wholly rejects the results of general elections due to manifest and massive irregularities. Form-45 was not given to our agents, results were stopped and votes were counted in the absence of our poll agents…,” the party chief Shahbaz Sharif tweeted on July 26.
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