Justice Nasir Saeed Sheikh of the Lahore High Court has asked the attorney general to assist on a petition filed by PML-N MNA Malik Riaz challenging an election tribunal’s decision to order a verification of thumbprints on ballots cast at NA-118 in the general elections.
The petitioner submitted that there was no provision in the law for votes to be verified as genuine through thumbprints. He also argued that it was impossible to verify all 150,000 votes cast at NA-118. He said that the election tribunal’s order was illegal and should be declared as such by the LHC.
The tribunal had on November 18, on a plea by Hamid Zaman of the PTI, who was declared the runner up to Riaz at NA-118, directed the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) to verify that the votes cast at NA-118 were genuine by examining the thumbprints on them.
The hearing is to resume on December 6.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 5th, 2013.