Imran Khan’s PTI banned from elections
Islamabad:
Despite winning the most seats, efforts to form the next government have gone nowhere, with embattled Imran Khan’s party deciding on Friday to join the Center on instructions from the jailed party founder and former prime minister. Opposition.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s barrister Ali Saif announced the decision, a day after the party named Omar Ayub Khan as its prime ministerial candidate and Aslam Iqbal as Punjab chief minister minister.
While talking to the media after visiting the Qaumi Watan Party in Islamabad, Saif said that the party decided to join the Center Party and the opposition parties in Punjab on the instructions of the party’s founder Khan.
“We decided to sit in opposition despite the fact that if we had gained seats based on our votes and the results had not changed, then maybe today we could have 180 seats. We have evidence that our candidate won,” he said.
It is unclear whether the party will contest the elections for prime minister and chief minister of Punjab after deciding to join the opposition ranks.
Earlier in the day, the PTI claimed that at least 85 seats it won in parliament were snatched away in the “biggest voter fraud” in the country’s history and announced plans to hold “peaceful” protests across the country on Saturday against Suspected of fraud.
Independent candidates – mostly backed by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party – won 93 of the 265 National Assembly seats contested in the February 8 election.
However, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) and Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) formed a post-poll alliance on Tuesday. , PTI’s two main rivals appear to be forming a coalition government.
PML-N won 75 seats, while the PPP came in third with 54 seats. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) also agreed to support them with its 17 seats.
To form a government, a party must win 133 of the 265 contested seats in the 266-member National Assembly.
PTI Information Minister Raoof Hasan and other leaders including Sher Afzal Marwat, Rehana Dar, Shoab Shah Shoaib Shaheen and Salman Akram Raja challenged the election results at various forums and addressed press conferences.
Hassan said 2024 would be remembered for the “biggest voter fraud” in Pakistan’s history against the party and its candidates.
“According to our estimates, in 177 [National Assembly] We were only given 92 seats that were supposed to be ours. We had 85 seats fraudulently taken away,” he said.
He said the party was taking constitutional and legal measures to combat manipulation and safeguard its rights.
“We have verified data for 46 seats and are currently compiling data for 39 seats,” he said.
Hassan also highlighted the difference between Form 45 and Form 47, which deal with the counting of votes per polling station in the constituency and the total number of all polling stations respectively.
Hassan claimed that there was a huge difference in the number of votes cast for the National Assembly and Provincial Assembly seats. In some cases, he said, the number of rejected votes exceeded the margin of victory.
PTI leader Shandana Gulzar said the party received 1.25 million votes from Karachi but strangely failed to win a single seat.
Party leader and senior lawyer Salman Akram Raja claimed that the fraud occurred when the results were transferred from polling stations to the offices of election officials.
“The results that were supposed to be announced under Form 45 were completely changed. They manipulated the election on the evening of February 8 as much as possible,” he said.
Separately, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb said at a press conference in Lahore that TV channels began to show partial vote counting results, but then That’s starting to change as more results are released as other polling stations complete counting.
“While the results were still being compiled, Form 45 was already circulating in the media and social media,” she said.
She said PTI was questioning the results in Punjab but it was not talking about the results in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as it won the province.
“It is part of the PTI culture to reject elections when they fail,” she said.
Meanwhile, the PTI has announced protests in the country on Saturday and is trying to win support from other political parties.
PTI has called for nationwide protests tomorrow (Saturday) against “unprecedented mass protests”. [and] “Blatant rigging” of elections.
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In a related development, Pakistan’s Supreme Court will hear a petition on Monday seeking to declare the recent general election invalid, with multiple political parties alleging vote rigging and deliberate delays in announcing the results.
The petition, which will be heard by a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa, asks the Supreme Court to annul the results of the February 8 polls and hold fresh elections within 30 days under supervision . According to the Express Tribune, this is an oversight of the judiciary.
According to the report, the petitioner is an ordinary citizen and he also named the Election Commission of Pakistan and the federal government as defendants in this case.
Meanwhile, the PML-N and PPP Coordination Committee were scheduled to meet on Friday to finalize government formation at the Centre, but the meeting has been postponed, according to media reports.
The meeting was reportedly postponed as the PML-N committee was yet to consult the party’s senior leadership on the matter, Geo News reported.
According to reports, the two parties will hold a second round of talks on Saturday to decide on a power-sharing plan to form a coalition government.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
