Re: Musharraf is a fair minded and sincere person - Chief Justice
And anyway, the CJ does not seem to be following legal sense when making these statements. If there is an amendment in the Electoral Rolls act that NIC is required to be included in the voter roll, what is the EC supposed to do? It is not the job of the CJ to tell us who has a clear mind or not or if musharraf is a fair or unfair person, it is to interpret law, not create it. Does he want the EC ti break the law and include people without NIC?
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\08\11\story_11-8-2007_pg1_1
Musharraf committed to timely polls: CJP
- SC won’t allow delay in compilation of voter lists
- Gives EC one month to include missing voters in electoral lists
By Mohammad Kamran
ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry said on Friday the Supreme Court (SC) will not allow any delay in the compilation of the new electoral rolls because President General Pervez Musharraf had expressed commitment to hold the general elections in time.
Presiding over a two-member division bench including Justice Javed Buttar, the CJP rejected the Election Commission’s (EC) request for more time and directed it to ensure that all eligible missing voters were enlisted in the computerised electoral rolls within 30 days.
The SC bench gave these directions while hearing a constitutional petition filed by Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister and PPP chairwoman. In her petition, Bhutto alleged that millions of voters could not be registered in the voters’ lists because of the precondition of electoral rolls.
The EC secretary told the bench that the condition of producing national identity cards (NIC) for vote registration was imposed by the president through an amendment in the Electoral Rolls Act, and now another amendment by the president was required to withdraw the NIC condition. To this, the CJP observed that the president had a clear mind on holding the general elections in time. “The president has shown commitment to hold the elections in time. He has a clear mind over the polls issue and the EC should not make the voter lists a delaying tactic,” he said.
The SC also directed the EC to inform the court how would it enroll the missing voters in the given time. The bench will resume the proceedings of the case on August 16.
The CJP directed Bhutto’s lawyer Latif Khosa to hold a meeting with the chief election commissioner to evolve a proper mechanism for the enrolment of voters in the computerised electoral rolls.
Khosa told the court that according to Article 51(2) of the Constitution, Section 6 of the Electoral Rolls Act 1973, the National Registration Act and Section 35 of the Representation of People’s Act 1976, every Pakistani citizen who had attained the age of 18 could vote. He said that no statute imposes a precondition of having NIC for registering in the electoral rolls, but the EC amended rule 3 of the Electoral Rolls Act and imposed the precondition of producing NIC for voters registration.
in the government house. No wonder people have been begging Musharraf to remove his pants [wardi]. That’s the only way to start cheena chupti and loot mar. You know when no one has power in the country, then warlordism runs amok. Just see what happened to the next door jannat (heaven) Afghanistan.