ISLAMABAD: Former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has created an online portal to consolidate “rigging evidence” from the February 8 polls by compiling election documents from polling stations across the country to highlight discrepancies between the number of votes polled and the final results announced.
Pakistan’s general elections this month were marred by a nationwide outage of cellphone networks, delays in vote counting and result announcements.
The situation led to widespread perceptions of election manipulation, prompting Khan’s PTI and other parties to protest against the alleged rigging, which they claim favored their opponents.
However, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has denied these allegations.
“It swiftly became public knowledge that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was making significant gains in the election,” Khan’s party wrote on the portal, referring to the unofficial results from various polling stations which started pouring in shortly after the voting concluded.
“However, concerns arose when the security apparatus, entrusted with safeguarding the electoral process, began exerting undue influence over the ROs [returning officers] and their premises,” it added. “Candidates were abruptly removed from RO offices, signaling the beginning of coercive measures to dictate election outcomes.”
The PTI said this was done before the preparation of the Form 47 document that details the result of the whole constituency, naming all the candidates while specifying their parties and mentioning the total number of votes cast in their favor.
The Form 47 is compiled with the help of another document, Form 45, which is prepared by presiding officers of polling stations in the same format.
The final result of a constituency is compiled by using the information in Forms 45 arriving from hundreds of polling stations.
The PTI said the “interference” by the security apparatus forced many ROs to issue Form 47 documents “that bore no resemblance to the original Form 45 submissions from the field.”
“In response to these troubling developments, we have compiled the submitted forms from various candidates for public and media scrutiny,” it added. “A comparative analysis reveals significant disparities between the vote counts recorded on ‘Form 45’ and the figures eventually endorsed by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). Discrepancies range from a few thousand to over seventy thousand votes in many instances, underscoring the urgent need for transparency and accountability in the electoral process.”
The party said there were a few forms still missing which it could not get hold of.
Additionally, it specified that it had mentioned only those constituencies where 90 percent or more of these forms were available.
The PTI claimed it had won 179 national seats on the basis of the evidence the portal contained.
However, the ECP only notified the triumph of its candidates from 92 constituencies. The party also noted that 87 of its seats remained disputed.
Ex-PM Khan’s party presents ‘consolidated rigging evidence’ through website, questions election integrity
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Ex-PM Khan’s party presents ‘consolidated rigging evidence’ through website, questions election integrity
- PTI claims it won 179 national seats on the basis of evidence available on the online portal, though ECP only notified 92
- It mentions huge discrepancies between Forms 45 and 47 results, saying 87 of its national seats continue to remain disputed