Imran Khan’s party calls Pakistan election results ‘biggest voter fraud’

Jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party claimed on Friday that at least 85 seats it won in parliament were taken away through manipulation and said the results of Pakistan’s elections would be remembered as the most important in the country’s history on the “biggest voter fraud” against the country and its political parties. successful candidate.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, founded by the cricketer-turned-politician, also expressed regret over the February 8 polls, saying the election would go down in the country’s history due to the scale of fraud.

A week after voting in a general election, cash-strapped Pakistan has shown no signs of forming a government. While no other party won an outright majority, independent candidates backed by Khan’s PTI won a majority of seats in the 266-member National Assembly.

The counting of votes was suspended on the night the polls ended, leading PTI to claim that the polls were rigged.

Since then, the party has frequently alleged how the agency followed incorrect procedures to declare PTI’s rivals as winners.

Pakistan’s military launched a new crackdown on Khan’s party on Friday, said to be aimed at putting pressure on the election winners to change their loyalties to the powerful military-backed party.

The crackdown comes amid the possibility of a coalition government between the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and four smaller parties.

Later in the afternoon, PTI Central Information Minister Raoof Hasan told a well-attended press conference: “According to our estimates, 177 [National Assembly] We were only given 92 seats that were supposed to be ours. Our 85 seats were cheated. “

Hassan said the party was taking constitutional and legal measures, adding that the party had verified data for about 46 seats and was in the process of compiling data for another 39 seats.

Elaborating on the three methods the party had to detect alleged fraud, the PTI leader said: “There is a difference between Form 45 and Form 47; there is also a huge difference in the number of votes cast for Parliament and Provincial Assembly seats, in some cases In cases where the number of rejected votes exceeds the margin of victory.”

It was an unusual setting for a press conference, looking more like a panda at an event. Nearly 70 candidates sat with key leaders, each presenting their 45 forms and claiming victory.

Table 45 is collected from polling stations in the constituencies, while Table 47 shows the aggregate results by constituency.

A presentation detailing seating statistics was also shown during the press conference. Shortly thereafter, party leader Seemabia Tahir took to the stage to play a video of alleged manipulation of the February 8 poll.

She also mentioned that senior PTI leader Yasmeen Rashid defeated PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif in the NA-130 seat and claimed that Rashid till the evening Both were ahead, but the latter was declared the winner the next morning.

The accusations raised at the press conference are the same ones raised by Khan and PTI before and even after the election. One of the charges was that the polls were “not free and fair”.

Salman Akram Raja, a prominent leader contesting from the NA-128 seat, lambasted the election authorities, claiming that “fraud was being committed from the polling stations to the returning officer’s office”. “What people voted for changed in the dark,” Raja was quoted as saying by International News.

Meanwhile, throughout the day, the party’s official X and other social media accounts continued to post updates about protests across the country.

“Peaceful nationwide protests are ongoing against the massive rigging of the 2024 elections. In Sindh, the PPP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh are benefiting from this rigging and the public mandate is not being respected!” said one post, which was accompanied by a short video.

(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from associated news agency – PTI)