Pakistan: Voting for electing the Senate chairman and also the deputy has begun because the opposition and also the government on Friday continued to trade barbs over “hidden” cameras found within the cubicle.
Polling officers are presently calling senators in alphabetical order of their names to forged their votes.
Syed Muzaffar Hussain Shah, who is presiding over the session and earlier administered the oath to any or all forty eight newly-elected members of the upper House, browse out the names of the candidates contesting for the positions additionally because the senators sponsoring them.
Shah conjointly directed that a body be fashioned comprising equal range of senators from the govt. and also the opposition to research the matter of “hidden” cameras found earlier within the session.
He more aforementioned new polling booths had been established and asked representatives from each side to examine them.
An officer of the Senate then proceeded to browse out names of senators in alphabetical order, who are collecting ballot papers from officers and casting their votes at the cubicle.
Earlier, the session got off to a loud begin because the opposition, junction rectifier by PPP’s Raza Rabbani, claimed that “secret cameras” had been put in at the cubicle. The opposition demanded that associate investigation be dole out into who was “in management of the Senate”.
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The protest prompted the leader to issue directives for dynamic the polling booth. “The current cubicle ought to be removed, another ought to be setup up freshly,” he said.
Earlier within the day, PPP senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar claimed that he and PML-N senator Musadiq leader found “spy cameras” on top of the polling booth.
The two opposition leaders conjointly wrote a letter to the leader inquiring for the formation of a Senate committee to probe the incident. Within the letter, the Senators mentioned that they found four cameras “obviously put in to record votes to be cast” throughout the scrutiny of the polling booth.
It stated that the incident was a “great blow” to democracy, rule of law, the Constitution and also the recent opinion by the Supreme Court that the Senate polls be command by ballot.
The letter planned the formation of a Senate committee consisting of associate equal range of members from the treasury and also the opposition. It conjointly planned the recovered cameras be secured and sealed until the ultimate disposal of the matter.
Meanwhile, Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry reacted to Khokhar’s tweet, stating that it looked “more sort of a CCTV cable” which “spy cameras are much more sophisticated”.
Former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani (PPP) and Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri (JUI-F) are the joint candidates for the posts of chairman and deputy chairman, severally.
The government had already declared that outgoing Senate Chairman Muhammad Sadiq Sanjrani are its candidate for the workplace for one more term. On weekday, Prime Minister Imran Khan appointive legislator Mirza Mohammad Afridi, a wealthy person from erstwhile Fata, for the post of the deputy chairman.
