Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman said “public opinion should be respected”. (document)
Karachi:
A senior Pakistani politician who won provincial elections in the commercial hub of Karachi last week has given up his seat, saying the vote was rigged in his favor.
Pakistan went to the polls in national and provincial elections on February 8, but the polls were marred by accusations of rigging to defeat independent candidates backed by jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
The caretaker government and Pakistan’s Election Commission rejected the accusations and said the country had the laws and systems in place to investigate specific complaints.
Jamaat-e-Islami’s Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman was declared the winner of Karachi provincial seat No. 129 after securing over 26,000 votes.
But Mr Rehman said that based on voting records at various polling stations, he found that the number of votes cast by independent candidate Saif Bari, backed by Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, had dropped from 31,000 to 11,000.
Imran Khan is jailed on corruption and criminal charges stemming from a feud with the country’s powerful military, and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party was barred from participating in the election, forcing its members to run as independents. The military denies interfering in politics.
“Public opinion should be respected, let the winners win, let the losers lose, and no one should get anything extra,” Lehman told Reuters on Wednesday.
“I’m not going to accept that, the winner deserves to win.”
Saif Bari could not be reached for comment and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf said it needed time to respond. The Election Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
