The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Sunday dismissed the allegations leveled by the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader Jamshed Iqbal Cheema and his covering candidate, his wife, for the National Assembly constituency NA-133 Lahore by-elections as “ill-founded”.
In a statement issued a day after the returning officer (RO) rejected the nomination papers of Cheema and his wife Musarrat, the ECP said Cheema accused it of transferring the votes of his proposers from NA-133 to other constituency.
The RO had rejected their nomination papers on the grounds that the proposers and seconders for the two were not residents of the constituency, as required under the relevant election laws.
It said their votes have been registered in NA-130 since 2018, adding that 2018 voters lists and subsequent review lists are available on record to back up its claim and vowed not to make any compromise over the transparency of the election.
On Saturday, the PTI had decided to challenge the ECP decision of rejecting the nomination papers of Cheema and his wife.
Later, Cheema told to the media that no one could be barred from participating in the election process on a technical ground. The biggest party of the country could not be deprived of the right to contest the by-election, he had said.
The NA-133 seat fell vacant after the death of PML-N MNA Parvaiz Malik who had won the seat in the 2018 general elections.
Malik polled around 89,000 votes and defeated the PTI candidate, Ejaz Chaudhry, who got 77,000 votes. Chaudhry is a senator now.
