Voicing concerns: Tareen calls for recount in 25 constituencies

Says it was unfair for the election commission to shift the expenses of the recount to the complainants.

ISLAMABAD:

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf  leader Jehangir Khan Tareen on Tuesday demanded a recount of ballots, along with thumb print verification, in 25 constituencies of the National Assembly including NA-154—his home constituency.

Blaming the Returning Officers for rigging and misappropriations in the general elections he said that it was unfair for the election commission to shift the expenses of the recount to the complainants.

Addressing a press conference along with the party’s Central Information Secretary Dr Shireen Mazari he presented an account of data regarding the massive “misappropriations” at the hands of electoral staff and urged the election commission to refurbish results in several constituencies including his own.

He added that the results received in the early hours of May 12, widely cited in the media, had declared him successful. However, according to him the results were then ‘tampered with by the Returning Officers through misappropriations and under the table rigging’.

“My application for a recount was kept pending for three days after May 14 and my access to the record was also denied by the election officials” he said.

“But as soon as the process of recounting started I found massive misappropriations in the process,” he added. He stated that out of 220 polling bags, the seals of 170 were broken while the counter foils of around 26500 ballot papers were without the signatures and seals of Assistant Presiding Officers.

“Marked electoral rolls from five polling stations were missing while 934 unused ballot papers were also absent from the record”, he said while expressing the hope that he would emerge triumphant once the recounting was over.

Speaking on the occasion Shireen Mazari criticised the ECP for making complainants pay for the recounts, saying, “Charging rupees ten or fifteen per vote from the aggrieved candidate who lodges an application for thumb impression’s audit owing to rigging or misappropriation in the polls is unfair,” she said.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 22^nd, 2013.