Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The person Defense Minister Khawaja Asif and his well-wishers would hold responsible for the expected annulment of his victory in the NA-110 (Sialkot) constituency is none other than Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan.

The interior minister heads the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), which on Wednesday submitted a detailed forensic report to the Supreme Court on the NA-110 election results.

Both Chaudhry Nisar and Khawaja Asif have not been on speaking terms for years owing to multiple reasons.

Khawaja Asif won the 2013 general election by securing 92,848 votes, while his opponent Usman Dar from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) got 71,573 votes. Alleging massive rigging, Mr Dar challenged the results in the election tribunal, but his petition was rejected. He then filed an appeal against the decision.

On Wednesday, the NADRA informed the apex court in its forensic report that out of the total votes polled more than 102,000 could not be verified through the verification software. Khawaja Asif had secured victory with a margin of more than 20,000 votes. Since the NADRA failed to verify more than 102,000 votes, it could be assumed that Khawaja Asif’s victory was not clean.

Although the NADRA told the Supreme Court that CNIC numbers mentioned on the counterfoils (a slip kept as a record) were valid, it could not be ascertained if genuine CNIC holders cast the votes.

The NA-110 was one of the four constituencies where the PTI alleged rigging by PML-N winning candidates and demanded investigation.

PML-N sources told Daily Times that Khawaja Asif was exasperated at the interior minister and NADRA Chairman Usman Mobin after he heard the news of submission of the forensic report. Little could NARDA do to bail Mr Asif out of the quandary since it was explicitly directed by the apex court to furnish the forensic report within a specific timeframe.

Khawaja Asif has already admitted he was not speaking to Chaudhry Nisar for the last four years. He then said that their frosty relations would never compromise the country’s security in anyway.

Analysts frequently questioned the state of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s governance when two senior most ministers were not talking to each other. And they were not ordinary ministers; they were directly responsible for the internal and external security.

The PML-N sources said that a so-called Lahori group in the party was casting aspersions on Chaudhry Nisar. While Chaudhry Nisar developed his reputation of being a no-nonsense interior minister, the Lahori group alleges he is using NADRA against Khawaja Asif.

The Lahori group repeatedly raised anti-Nisar diatribes before the prime minister in the past. However, it failed to marginalise Chaudhry Nisar owing to his political clout and connections.

With prime minister recovering post open-heart surgery and would not be able to deal with intra-party controversies anytime soon, the issue of NADRA forensic report would saturate the two senior N-Leaguers with more bitterness.