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The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has yet not notified the victory of most of the independent candidates who have won National Assembly seats in the general elections has raised concerns among their voters and stakeholders amid political wrangling over a numbers game for the formation of a new government in the Centre, English daily Dawn reported on Sunday.
The report said, over 101 independent candidates — most of them backed by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) — have won National Assembly seats, citing unofficial results. Until Saturday evening, the election panel had notified the result of only eight independents and declared the victory of 33 more through a late-night notification.
It is important to note that under the election rules of the country, independent candidates have only three days to join a political party after the official notification of their victory. The ECP has so far notified results of 154 out of a total of 265 NA constituencies, where elections took place 10 days ago i.e. on February 8.
Rule 92(6) reads “For the purpose of this rule, the expression “total number of general seats won by political party” shall include the independent returned candidate or candidates who may duly join such political party within three days of the publication in the official gazette of the names of the returned candidates”.
Meanwhile, former prime minister Imran Khan‘s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) today demanded a judicial commission to probe a senior bureaucrat’s allegation that the election body and the top judiciary were involved in vote rigging, reported news agency PTI.
Senior PTI leader Barrister Gohar Ali Khan today said that the party was demanding a judicial commission to investigate the claims of ‘rigged election results’ following the election rigging allegations of the Rawalpindi Commissioner.
Earlier on Saturday, Rawalpindi Commissioner Liaquat Ali Chattha alleged that the candidates who were “losing” the elections “were made to win” in the city.
Before resigning from his post, the Rawalpindi Commissioner claimed that 13 candidates from the city were forcefully declared winners.
“I am taking responsibility for all this wrongdoing and telling you that the chief election commissioner and the chief justice are also completely involved in this,” Chattha said.
Chattha resigned from his office after “accepting responsibility” for the manipulation of poll results.
Gohar said that Chattha’s allegations corroborated what the party had been saying all along.
“This is the first time a commissioner is raising his voice according to his conscience. He said that he made sure candidates who lost were made to win while those who won were made to lose. This corroborates what we have been saying,” he said.
“That is why the PTI demands that a judicial commission be formed and an inquiry be conducted. And not just an inquiry, but those [involved] should be made to join the inquiry,” he said, adding that the report of such an inquiry should also be shared with the people.
He alleged that efforts were made to keep the party out of the electoral arena when people, responding to 71-year-old PTI leader Khan’s call, went to the polling stations in huge numbers.
“We had won 180 seats in the National Assembly, 42 seats in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly, 115 in Punjab, 16 in Sindh, and four in Balochistan assembly,” he said.
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Published: 18 Feb 2024, 09:33 PM IST
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