Party members said Mehmoodur Rasheed and Farooq Amjad Mir had also threatened to quit if elections were not held afresh. PHOTO: ABID NAWAZ/EXPRESS
LAHORE:
Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan will likely hold a meeting in a day or two to listen complaints of candidates and their supporters about alleged irregularities and rigging in the party’s district-level elections held on February 26.
Mehmoodur Rasheed, the losing candidate for president, and several union council office bearers visited Khan’s home but did not find him there.
Some of the visitors said that they were not protesting. They said they just wanted to speak to Khan about their apprehensions regarding fairness of party elections.
The provincial election commissioner had announced that Abdul Aleem Khan and Abdul Rasheed Bhatti of Unity Group were elected president and general secretary for Lahore, respectively. The losing candidates have not been pleased with the results.
They have raised questions regarding the counting of votes and the transparency of elections. They submitted their reservations to Chief Election Commissioner Hamid Khan alleging that their polling agents were not taken on board by the provincial election commissioner at the counting. The rejected votes, they said, were not shown to the polling agents.
They said that all the rejected votes for the president and general secretary were from urban union councils. There was no rejected vote from the rural union councils. They added that the ballot boxes were missing for eight hours from the polling station before being recovered from a vehicle parked nearby.
They accused the Unity Group of rigging the poll and demanded fresh elections at town and district levels.
A party member, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that Hammad Azhar and Farhat Abbas (both ran for general secretary) had met with Hamid Khan about the alleged rigging.
Both men demanded re-polling threatening to quit otherwise.
Party members said Mehmoodur Rasheed and Farooq Amjad Mir, who both ran for president, had also threatened to quit if elections were not held afresh.
The members said that some officer bearers at the union council level were also threatening to leave the party.
Party Elections Tribunal, headed by Justice (retd) Bashir A Mujahid, is hearing all complaints regarding the elections.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 2nd, 2013.
Correction: The word 'urban' was earlier misspelt as 'unban' in the story. The error has been rectified.
COMMENTS (12)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
Imran khan didnot face the losing candidates.
ISnt he too snobish
mehmood ur rasheed and farooq amjad mir are not leaving the party. Let us not play around and distort facts. There are some grievances but will be resolved soon.
@saeed: Yes. Gotta love PTI supporter logic. "Report the negative actions of all other parties so we can spam 'vote 4 PTI keke' but how dare you treat PTI the same way."
POOR EDITING/PROOF READING, SHOULDNT IT BEEN "URBAN UNION COUNCILS" ???
I think Imran Khan is repeating the history of Asghar Khan. Asghar khan lead the movement against Bhutto in 1977 but party vanished after intra party elections due to serious differences. And now Asghar Khan did not exist. That is why I called Imran Khan as Asghar Khan-2.
Mian Mehmood-ur-Rasheed can be called Babai PTI due to his long struggle in Lahore when nobody was serious about PTI. We should listen to his reservations carefully. If ballot boxes were missing for eight hours from the polling station before being recovered from a vehicle parked nearby and if these big number of rejected votes were not seen by all parties then there is something fishy.
To build a strong foundation PTI need to ensure that the whole intra party election process is transparent even if it has to be repeated as Lahore is very important and any mishandling of this sensitive issue will actually shake the whole PTI.
Wrong Word:
They said that all the rejected votes for the president and general secretary were from unban.
Right Word:
Urban not Unban in above sentence
Abdul Aleem Khan is known as an extremely corrupt person and for real estate scandals by all Lahoris !!!
The problem with IK is that he'll do anything to curry with people with deep pockets , no matter how corrupt they are .
No wonder the ideological worker are leaving in droves...
this is another ET typical article,this is so far biggest internal party election in pk,i think PTI has done really well,lifafa bolta hai;)
This is typical. who ever looses blames it on fraud and rigging. Dont blame these losers thier leader is the same.
Come on ET..for god sake..now it is getting really evident and prominent that express group is totally biased against PTI..and totally in favor of noon...let it be express TV..express urdu news paper or ET...you are following the same exact agenda of if you can not convince them..confuse them..you deliberately try to spread miss information against PTI..and never ever focused on public issues directly related to Noon government..where is the news of a boy died from the metro bus due to bad planning and negligence in the route of metro bus..I am saying this because this will destroy your credibility...it is so much evident and prominent now that even a blind person can feel this..I hope you let my comment go after all you are the champion of free speech and opinions..
I don't belong to Lahore, I just lived there for few years, I don't personally know Miyaa mehmood ur Rashid, but the first time I saw his banners in Lahore, I don't know why but I didn't like. I get a feeling that he is a typical politition. I may be completely wrong but this is what I thought and am still of that opinion, so IK please don't be black mail, am not saying don't investigate.