The newly chosen senator and the candidate for Senate chairman this March, Sayed Yousuf Raza Gilani has challenged the results of the Senate chairman election in the Islamabad High Court (IHC), on Monday.
IHC has accepted the petition, and IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah will preside over the hearing scheduled for March 24 (Wednesday).
Farooq H. Naek filed the petition on Gilani’s behalf which named presiding officer Syed Muzzafar Hussain Shah, the Ministry of Law and Justice, the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, the Senate Secretariat and Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani as respondents.
The petition urged the IHC to declare the results of the election as well as the decision to make Sadiq Sanjrani the Senate chairman “null and void”.
The petition also called upon the IHC to declare the rejection of the seven votes for Gilani as unlawful and thus return him as a candidate for the office of the Senate chairman.
It called upon the court to prevent Sanjrani from acting out his duties as the Senate chairman.
The Pakistan Democratic Movement’s (PDM) joint-candidate for the Senate chairman election, Yousuf Raza Gilani, had lost the election to the PTI-backed Sanjrani after seven votes of his were rejected by the presiding officer.
The opposition had immediately challenged the result of the election but were overruled by the presiding officer who said the votes had been rejected because they were not stamped correctly. With a total of eight votes rejected, Gilani received 42 valid votes, while Sanjrani won the election after bagging 48 votes. In total, 98 senators voted in the election.
The issue aroused controversy in the opposition ranks with the PPP vowing to challenge the result in the high court.
