The office of the provincial election commissioner in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has asked returning officers in different districts to ensure the recovery of unpaid fines from political leaders, including former premier Imran Khan, who owesg Rs200,000 to the electoral watchdog, during the scrutiny of their nomination papers for Feb 8 elections, it emerged today.
According to a letter to returning officers dated Dec 28 issued by the provincial election commissioner — which Dawn.com has seen — it is disclosed that a total of 62 political figures from KP and Punjab are indebted to the ECP with fines ranging from Rs5,000 to Rs50,000. The fines are contingent on the severity of the committed violations.
As per the letter, Imran allegedly committed four separate violations, and each time, he received a fine of Rs50,000, which he has yet to pay. All these violations occurred in March 2022, just a month before his ouster through a parliamentary vote.
In the ECP’s list, the largest outstanding amount is attributed to Imran, with a total of Rs200,000 owed. Following him is the former chief minister of KP, Mahmood Khan, who has a fine of Rs150,000 for three violations, and ex-federal minister Murad Saeed with Rs100,000 for two violations.
Among other notable figures on the list are PTI’s Azam Khan Swati, Taimur Saleem Jhagra, Kamran Bangash, Shaukat Ali Yousafzai, and JUI-P’s Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, each having outstanding amounts of Rs50,000 owed to the ECP.
“Candidates and public office holders [in the past] violated code of conduct during election campaigns of various previous elections to National Assembly, provincial assembly and local government elections. Accordingly, the DMOs imposed fines upon them under Section 234 sub-section (3) of the Election Act 2017 and the said persons failed to deposit the same and some of them filed appeals before the ECP which were rejected being devoid of merit,” reads the ECP letter.
The letter further adds: “It has been desired by the competent authority that the said list/detail of defaulters be shared with the returning officers appointed for general elections to the constituencies of National Assembly/provincial assembly and recovery of unpaid fines may be ensured during scrutiny of nomination papers of said defaulters.”
According to the election schedule, the last date to scrutinise their nomination papers would be Dec 30. The process had started on Dec 24.
The last date for filing appeals against the RO’s decisions on rejecting or accepting nomination papers is January 3 with the last date for deciding the appeals by an appellate tribunal on Jan 10.
The revised list of candidates will be published on Jan 11 and the last date for withdrawing one’s candidature is Jan 12. The polling day will be Feb 8.