LAHORE: Awami National Party (ANP) on Thursday accused Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) of rigging the by-elections of NA-4 constituency ‘with the help of army and police personnel’.
Describing the by-elections of the NA-4 constituency as massively rigged, candidate of ANP Khushdil Khan claimed that Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had not taken sufficient measures to ensure the prevention of rigging in the constituency, alleging that many officers handling the voting process were affiliated with the PTI.
#ANP’s Khushdil Khan accuses #PTI of rigging in NA-4 with the support of army and police pic.twitter.com/v1eP8pShhz
— Daily Times (@dailytimespak) October 26, 2017
Also read: Infographic: All you need to know about NA-4 by-poll
Earlier, the provincial government was accused of violating rules of Election Commission by initiating developmental projects in the constituency. The rules stipulated by Election Commission makes it illegal to initiate development work in an area where election schedule has been announced. Nonetheless, PTI has argued that the work was part of the annual development projects and has no link with the polls.
Victory in KP’s ‘litmus test’
Unofficial results on Thursday indicated that PTI gained a decisive lead over its opponents in the by-election on the key NA-4 (Peshawar-IV) seat.
At the time of filing this report, unofficial and inconclusive results from 265 of 269 polling stations showed that PTI won the contest by a significant margin, securing 45,631 votes.
Political pundits considered the by-elections crucial and described the constituency as a litmus test for Imran Khan’s PTI that was facing a tough task to save its seat after JUI-F and QWP withdrew their candidates in favour of PML-N. Besides ANP and PPP, three-parties-alliance of PML-N, QWP and JUI-F is posing a serious threat to PTI.
Of the 15 candidates contesting, eight were independent. According to Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), more than 0.3 million votes are registered in the constituency.
