Makhdoom Babar
Editor-in-Chief
The much talked about polling for the National Assembly’s Constituency Number 249, Karachi is over now. PPP has been declared victorious in this contest with PML (N) remaining the runner up> However the most surprising element in the entire episode is that the defunct outfit Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), that was declared banned and made defunct by the federal government a couple of week ago , was not only allowed by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to participate in these polls despite being a notified entity by the government of Pakistan but its name was also placed in the results, announced by the ECP.
The procedures and rules in this regard indicate that if a political entity is banned and made defunct by the Federal Government, it is not allowed to take part in any polling activity, particularly the one, taking place under the ECP. ECP is firstly supposed to withhold the allotted election symbol to the candidate of such an outfit, secondly it is supposed to delete the name of the candidate of such a party from the ballot paper or to re-print the ballot papers accordingly, thirdly if there is a shortage of time for re-printing of ballot papers, the votes polled to the candidate of such party are not to be included in official count and instead are declared void and are placed in the category of rejected votes.
Surprisingly, in this case, none of these practices have been exercised by ECP and in fact the banned party’s candidate was not only allowed to properly and actively participate in the entire polling process but his votes were officially counted and mentioned in the announced results.
More interestingly, all the parties that participated in the polling process are busy in raising hue and cry about the results, without questioning that how a defunct entity was allowed to take part in the process. What is further interesting is that the entire circus of electronic media is also enjoying in elaborating the accusations of the main political parties against each other, instead of raising of one single question about the participation or counting of the votes, polled to the candidate of a defunct entity.
The Daily Mail believes that the ECP is supposed to issue an official; clarification in this regard and the government must take action against those in the ECP who let this happen and by virtue of which, made the mockery of the government’s notification to ban the said entity under the set laws, rules and regulations. The Daily Mail is also of the firm opinion that such negligence of highly sensitive nature have become routine affairs to earn embarrassment and rather humiliation to the government of Pakistan, worldwide and thus must be investigated and prevented to take place in future.
