Election complaints: ‘Hold fresh polls or I will quit’

Losing candidates visit Khan’s residence, rigging allegations run rife.

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 2^nd, 2013.

Correction: The word 'urban' was earlier misspelt as 'unban' in the story. The error has been rectified.