Islamabad - A division bench (DB) of Islamabad High Court (IHC) Tuesday served notices on Nargis Faiz Malik, the PPP Senate candidate from Islamabad, in a petition wherein Raheela Magsi, a PML-N candidate for the same area, has challenged rejection of her nomination papers for Senate elections.
The division bench comprising Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Aamir Farooq issued the notices and deferred the hearing for further proceedings till Wednesday (today).
Advocate Amjad Iqbal Qureshi, the counsel for Nargis Faiz, informed the court that it was his client on whose application Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had disqualified Magsi for contesting Senate elections from Islamabad and the court should also hear her version before deciding this petition.
Therefore, the court issued notices to Nargis Faiz and deferred the matter. The IHC bench also directed Malik’s counsel to submit before the court a copy of the application that his client had filed before the ECP.
The counsel further told the court that at the application of his client ECP had disqualified Magsi for contesting elections from Islamabad due to the reasons that Magsi had got her vote registered in Islamabad after announcement of the election schedule. He adopted before the court that Magsi is not a resident of Islamabad but she is a resident of Tando Allahyar, Sindh.
Previously, Information Secretary of Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) Dr Shireen Mazari has also filed a petition against the candidature of Magsi. Initially the IHC registrar office had raised objections over this petition but now it is also fixed for hearing on Wednesday (today).
The ECP on February 27 last disqualified Magsi after Malik had questioned the transfer of Magsi’s vote from Tando Allahyar to Islamabad.
Magsi, a candidate of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) for the women’s reserved seat from the federal capital, has challenged the rejection of her nomination papers before the IHC.
She has adopted that the transfer of a vote cannot form the basis for the rejection of nomination papers, as the commission has itself stated in categorical terms that section 20 of the electoral rolls act regarding transfer of vote did not apply to the Senate elections. She further adopted that in the cases of some other candidates, ECP has cleared their candidatures but it was a discriminatory act towards her.
Raheela informed the court that she owns properties in Islamabad for over two decades and any person from other provinces could transfer his/her vote to Islamabad.