Former Special Assistant to the Chief Minister of Punjab on Information and Broadcasting Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan on Saturday said that a report presented by an Election Commission official on the manner in which the Daska by-elections were held was “distorted”.
Addressing a press conference, Awan said that PTI candidates from Daska had taken the report to the Supreme Court.
“We have spoken about hundreds of petitions related to returning officer’s (RO) and District Returning Officers (DRO); our concerns about these officers were valid,” she said.
An inquiry report issued by the Election Commission of Pakistan, which was reported on a day earlier, determined that the NA-75 Sialkot-IV by-election held in Daska on February 19 was not held in a fair, free, and transparent manner.
Commenting on the findings of the report, Awan said that the matter regarding the abduction of the presiding officers was “not clear”. She insisted that the government has “no soft corner” for anyone regarding the Daska election.
Awan’s name was included in the fact-finding report. According to the report, of the staff employed for election duty from the education department, Muhammad Iqbal Kaloya, Deputy Director (Colleges), Sialkot, was found involved in attending meetings at AC House, Daska, “which were meant for manipulating the election process”, in which Ali Abbas, Zeeshan Javed, Asif Hussain, Firdous Ashiq Awan, Muhammad Awais, and some other persons were present.
ECP’s inquiry report
The report stated that the election officials and other government functionaries “did not play their designated role in a requisite manner [and] they were found puppets in the hands of their unlawful masters”.
The fact-finding team gathered details from official records obtained from Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, Islamabad; Intelligence Bureau, Islamabad; District Police, Sialkot; Elite Police Force; written statements and supplementary question and answer sessions of the presiding officers (POs), senior assistant presiding officers, naib qasids, drivers, and police personnel, etc, the report said.
