5.  Both applicants live in Baku. They are well-known opposition politicians. The first applicant served as a member of parliament until the elections of 2005. Both applicants stood for the elections to the National Assembly (Milli Majlis) of 6 November 2005 as candidates of the opposition bloc Azadliq. 6.  The first applicant was registered as a candidate by the Constituency Electoral Commission (“the ConEC”) for the single‑mandate Surakhany Second Electoral Constituency no. 31. There were a total of twenty-eight polling stations in the constituency. 7.  On 7 November 2005 representatives of the Azadliq bloc applied to the Central Election Commission (“the CEC”) with several complaints claiming that, during election day, there had been numerous violations of the electoral law to the advantage of the pro-governmental candidate, and requesting that the election results for the entire constituency be invalidated. 8.  On 8 November 2006 the CEC invalidated the election results in ten polling stations of Surakhany Second Election Constituency no. 31 owing to infringements of electoral law in those polling stations. The CEC did not invalidate the election results for the entire constituency. 9.  Subsequently, the CEC published, on its official website, the preliminary results of the elections in Surakhany Second Election Constituency no. 31 based on the results of the vote in the eighteen remaining polling stations, naming the applicant as the winner with 3,549 votes in total, his closest contender having obtained 3,515 votes. 10.  The second applicant ran for election in the single‑mandate Jalilabad-Masalli-Bilesuvar Electoral Constituency no. 69. 11.  After an official tabulation of election results by the ConEC on 6 November, the ConEC drew up an official record of election results (səsvermənin nəticələrinə dair protokol) which stated that the applicant had received a total of 4,264 votes in the constituency. His closest contender had received 3,575 votes. The ConEC record named the applicant as the winner. 12.  The ConEC record of results was submitted to the CEC for approval. 13.  The CEC’s final record of election results (seçkilərin ümumi yekunları haqqında protokol) named the first applicant as the elected candidate in Surakhany Second Electoral Constituency no. 31 and the second applicant as the elected candidate in Jalilabad-Masalli-Bilesuvar Electoral Constituency no. 69. 14.  As for the country-wide results, the CEC invalidated the election results in four electoral constituencies and approved the results in 121 constituencies, including both applicants’ constituencies. 15.  On 23 November 2005 the CEC record of results, together with the ConEC record of results and other documents, was submitted to the Constitutional Court for review and approval. 16.  By a decision of 1 December 2005, the Constitutional Court approved the election results in 115 electoral constituencies only and invalidated the results in the remaining six constituencies. The decision stated, in the relevant part:
“In its letter of 30 November 2005 to the Constitutional Court, the Prosecutor General’s Office indicated that it had received, from the [CEC] and relevant [ConECs], a total of 72 applications concerning breaches of the electoral law of an allegedly criminal nature during the elections to the National Assembly. As a result of an examination of these applications, 11 criminal cases have been instituted [against a number of registered candidates and election officials in a number of constituencies, including] chairmen and members of 10 polling station electoral commissions of Surakhany Second Electoral Constituency no. 31 for falsification of electoral documents [and] 4 members of the [ConEC] of Jalilabad-Masalli-Bilesuvar Electoral Constituency no. 69 for abuse of official authority.
Following the examination of the documents submitted by the [CEC], including additional documents requested by the Constitutional Court, as well as the opinion of the commissioned specialists, 115 out of 121 [ConEC] results records [“protokollar”] which formed the basis for the [CEC results record] should be considered to be in accordance with the requirements of the Electoral Code.
As for the remaining 6 (six) constituencies, [including] Surakhany Second Electoral Constituency no. 31 [and] Jalilabad-Masalli-Bilesuvar Electoral Constituency no. 69 ..., the election results in these constituencies should not be approved because the results records of [the ConECs] of these constituencies do not meet the requirements of the Electoral Code. ...
... the Plenum of the Constitutional Court decides: 2.  Not to approve the election results in ... Surakhany Second Electoral Constituency no. 31, Jalilabad-Masalli-Bilesuvar Electoral Constituency no. 69 [and four other constituencies]. 17.  The Constitutional Court ordered repeat elections on 13 May 2006 for all the constituencies in which the results had been invalidated.