PESHAWAR: Awami National Party’s candidate Khushdil Khan was declared elected on Thursday after recounting of votes by the returning officer on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly constituency PK-70 (Peshawar-V), defeating former provincial minister Shah Farman of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf with a margin of 187 votes.

Earlier, in the provisional results, Returning Officer Sheraz Khan had declared Mr Farman as the winner who secured 15,404 votes against 15,357 votes of Khushdil Khan, a former deputy speaker of the KP Assembly.

According to the final consolidated results, Mr Khan has secured 14,871 votes against 14,684 votes of Mr Farman.

Mr Farman will, however, remain the MPA-elect as he has also won the election from PK-71 (Peshawar-VI), defeating his rival candidates by a big margin. On that seat he bagged 7,309 votes against his close rival PML-N’s Safiullah who secured 9,202 votes.

Returning Officer Sheraz Khan, who is a civil judge, pronounced the consolidated results after a marathon recounting of votes which continued for five days. In the provisional results, the total rejected votes were 2,095, but after recounting the number of rejected votes rose to 3,613.

Although after the provisional results the PTI had swept Peshawar as it had won five of the National Assembly and 13 of the provincial assembly seats, with the reversal of this result it has now lost one of the 13 KP Assembly seats here.

In Faisalabad, former minister of state for water and power Abid Sher Ali stayed runner-up from NA-108 even after recount, while petitions of former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, Zulfiqar Khan Khosa and Jamshed Dasti for recounting were rejected by the Lahore High Court’s Multan bench on Thursday.

Abid Sher had lost the election to PTI’s Farrukh Habib. Recount on his plea continued for three days. According to RO’s notification, Mr Habib obtained 112,029 votes while Mr Ali secured 110,828.

The LHC’s Multan bench rejected the petitions for recount in four NA and three PA seats. Yousaf Raza Gilani lost the NA-158 seat to PTI’s Ibrahim Khan.

In Lahore, the LHC stayed issuance of returned candidate’s notification in NA-91 (Sargodha) while summoning the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) secretary along with record of NA-131 (Lahore) — the constituency from where Khawaja Saad Rafique and Imran Khan had contest the July 25 poll.

Justice Shahid Karim restrained the ECP from issuing the notification of the returned candidate in NA-91 on a petition moved by Amir Sultan Cheema of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf who was the runner-up. Dr Zulfiqar Ali Bhatti of the PML-N won the election from the constituency by a thin margin of 87 votes.

Published in Dawn, August 3rd, 2018