Amidst the controversy over the alleged vote rigging in Pakistan’s elections, a senior leader of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s party on Thursday announced that it will approach the Supreme Court against the tampering of results of individual polling stations.
The general election was held in the country on February 8, but instead of calming the frayed political tempers, the polls created a new controversy that the results were allegedly changed by manipulating the entries in Form 45.
Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Barrister Ali Zafar said his party would challenge the issue of alleged tampering with Form-45s issued by the Election Commission of Pakistan in the Supreme Court.
We will challenge that matter (of Form-45s) before the Supreme Court, he said responding to a query by a reporter outside the Islamabad High Court. Form 45 acts as the official record of votes cast at a polling station. Thus, it is a crucial record for compiling results at the level of the constituency in Pakistan.
The announcement by Zafar came a day after the PTI leadership alleged that the Form-45s published by the ECP on its website were heavily tampered with, with the results being changed in favour of PTI’s rivals and voter turnout crossing 100 per cent at several polling stations.
The Dawn newspaper reported that PTI Chairman Gohar Ali Khan told the media that after the elections, one tried to forget the past and move forward, but if the elections were rigged on such a large scale, it became next to impossible to move forward.
He said the poll fraud evidence had become clearer after the commission published Form-45s on its website.
The PTI chairman reiterated that his party was triumphant on 180 National Assembly seats in the general elections under “original” Forms-45.
“Our mandate was stolen through results tampering, which is unprecedented in the political history of the country,” he insisted.
He said the scale of election “fraud” could be judged from the fact that while voter turnout across the country stood at 40 per cent, it had crossed 100 per cent in some places.
Gohar emphasised that his party workers and supporters would petition election tribunals against ECP’s decisions and stage protest demonstrations until they get back the “stolen public mandate”.
PTI leader Taimur Khan Jhagra said that Form-45s published by the ECP on its website were massively tampered with.
He said the PTI had obtained 90 per cent of Form-45s on the polling day and they differed from the ones uploaded by the ECP.
Referring to results of a polling station in the National Assembly constituency NA-130 — Dr Yasmin Rashid vs Nawaz Sharif — Jhagra claimed that Sharif’s 378 votes were unfairly increased to 1,378 by adding the digit 1 in front of the ‘378’ in a Form-45 uploaded by the ECP.
He also gave similar examples from other constituencies to highlight changes made in the entries of Form 45.
PTI losing candidate Salman Akram Raja said that election results had never been tampered with on such a large scale before.
“In my constituency’s polling station number 5, the turnout was 38 per cent and I got 357 and the opponent got 123 votes. However, in the Form-45 uploaded on ECP’s website, my votes remained the same but my opponent’s vote has been increased to 723 and turnout has been increased from 38 per cent to 86 per cent,” he said.
“The other polling stations in the same building have around 40 per cent turnout.” He added, “I suggest people download the Forms-45 and check how the ECP has done rigging.” Raja demanded that the number of election tribunals should be increased to swiftly decide the vote rigging cases.
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