LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Thursday ordered re-counting of votes for the election of Punjab’s chief minister held on April 16, instructing that the votes of 25 dissident PTI lawmakers be excluded from the counting process.
A five-member bench comprising Justice Sadaqat Ali Khan, Justice Shahid Jamil Khan, Justice Shehram Sarwar Chaudhry, Justice Sajid Mahmood Sethi and Justice Tariq Saleem Sheikh announced the verdict with a 4-1 majority.
In a short order issued after the hearing, the LHC instructed that votes in the election held on April 16 be recounted after excluding 25 votes of the defecting lawmakers. If the required majority for Hamza — which is 186 votes in the 371-member strong house — to stay the CM is not secured, the election will be held again, unless another candidate has majority votes.
Hamza was elected as the Punjab CM on April 16 during a provincial assembly session that was marred by violence. He received a total of 197 votes — 11 more than the required 186 — including from 25 dissident PTI MPAs that were crucial for his victory. On May 20, those lawmakers were de-seated by the ECP for defecting.
Since then, a series of petitions have challenged Hamza’s election as the chief minister. All of them were, however, clubbed together after the court observed that they were identical.
The petitions
In his petition, Elahi, who was also the PTI-PML-Q’s candidate for the CM Office, requested the court to declare that Hamza was not the chief minister since he had failed to secure the requisite number of votes in light of the SC’s interpretation stating the votes of defecting lawmakers would not be counted.
Therefore, the April 16 election, its results and the certificate issued by the Punjab Assembly deputy speaker to Hamza declaring his victory had “no legal effect”, the petition stated.
