Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Tuesday said a “record rigging” took place in the May 11 elections in the NA-256 constituency, adding that his party had accepted the polling result, but would never accept the fraudulent polling.
Addressing a press conference on Tuesday, Khan said “record rigging” took place in the May 11 elections in the NA-256 constituency and expressed fear that the by-elections would see similar rigging if action was not taken.
He said the people involved, including the returning officers, should be held accountable for what they have done.
Khan said he wanted to give a message to the Supreme Court Khan that his party accepted election results, but asserted that his party would never accept rigging while referring to a report issued by NADRA yesterday that exposed massive irregularities during elections in NA-256, Karachi.
He requested Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to take action immediately as “the public is demanding justice”.
Khan also stated that if the Supreme Court had taken notice of rigging earlier, this would not have happened.
The PTI chairman also said, “The election commission should also be held accountable. Without accountability, corruption will never cease to exist and the public is then burdened in terms of inflation.”
He stated, “Democracy will not prevail until and unless free and fair elections are carried out. Dictators carry out such [May 11] elections.”
“How can people involved in the rigging become clean in the assembly?” he asked.
Imran also said if justice was not done, the PTI would protest in the streets.
He claimed that the PTI was not part of the rigging in the elections, and the party would also hold free and fair by-elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).
Khan said Khyber Pakhutnkhwa government was trying to introduce biometric and electronic voting system during the Local Government elections.
“We want to set an example so that no one can point a finger that there was election fraud in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.”
Khan added that free and fair elections could not be held under the present system.
‘We want accountability as it is the only way for fair elections in the future,” he demanded.
Yesterday, a NADRA report disclosed that only 6, 805 votes were found to be genuine of a total of 84,448 votes cast at 66 polling stations in the NA-256 constituency comprising Faisal Cantonment, Shah Faisal Colony, Council-1 of the Model Colony in MalirTown and parts of Gulshan-e-Iqbal.
MQM candidate Iqbal Muhammad Ali had secured victory.
His victory was challenged by PTI’s Zubair Khan, who secured over 69,000 votes. According to NADRA, invalid Computerised National Identity Cards were mentioned on 11,343 used counterfoils, while 791 voted were found to be from outside the constituency.