RAWALPINDI Lahore High Court (LHC) Rawalpindi Bench on Monday issued notices to Secretary Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on a petition moved to stay issuance of a notification of the returned candidates of three constituencies including NA-68 (Sargodha-V) where by-polls were held on August 5. LHC Judge Ch M Tariq directed the Secretary ECP to submit his para wise comments in this regard by August 16 and adjourned the proceedings. According to the details, Syed Nusrat Ali Shah filed a civil miscellaneous application through his lawyer Manzoor Hussain and prayed to the court to stay official and non-official counting and consolidation of votes, announcement of results and issuance of notification of returned candidate. In his main petition, Nusrat had questioned the role of the Election Commission (EC) and the CEC in holding by-elections and challenged the process of by-elections on the grounds that ECP is unconstitutional. In his petition, he had stated that he wanted to contest the by-election in Sargodha, but was reluctant to do so because the current EC was not constitutional. Nusrat said that under the amended Constitution, the CEC should be a retired SC judge and his selection should be made by a 12-member parliamentary committee from a list of three members to be proposed by PM and the Opposition Leader. The incumbent CEC has not been appointed in accordance with the amendment, he argued. The petitioner said that under the amended Article 218, the EC was to comprise four retired HC judges and every member should be selected in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 213. He argued that all elections conducted and being conducted by the current ECP are unconstitutional and have no legal effect.