LAHORE: A Pakistani election tribunal on Monday unseated the country’s railways minister and ordered a fresh poll in his constituency over alleged irregularities in the 2013 general election.

Khawaja Saad Rafique won the NA-125 seat in the eastern city of Lahore with a majority of nearly 40,000 as the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) swept to a landslide victory in May 2013.

But the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) party, led by former cricket star Imran Khan, has claimed widespread fraud tainted the poll which made Nawaz Sharif prime minister for a third time.

Rafique’s PTI rival Hamid Khan, who came second in NA-125, filed a petition against the election result, which was accepted on Monday by an election tribunal headed by Judge Javaid Rashid Mehboobi.

The brief ruling said the election should be re-run but did not give details of the judge’s reasoning.

A defiant Rafique criticized the decision, telling reporters he was being “punished for the mistakes of returning officers.”