Pak EC rejects plea of Hafiz Saeed’s MML to register as political party

Pakistan’s Election Commission has rejected an application by the Milli Muslim League (MML), the political face of Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed’s Jamat-ud-Dawah (JuD), to register it as a political. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) was asked by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) to review its decision of last year through which it rejected MML’s registration bid. A four-member bench of the commission, chaired by its Sindh member Abdul Ghaffar Soomro, decided against allowing the MML to be registered as a political party.
In its short order, the bench said that the decision had been taken in light of observations of the Ministry of Interior which had expressed its reservations because of the party’s links with the banned JuD leader Hafiz Saeed.
The interior ministry had opposed enlisting of the MML as a political party, arguing that it is an offshoot of the banned JuD.