LAHORE: PTI secretary Omar Ayub Khan, has instructed all party candidates and polling agents to collect Form-45 and appro­ach the courts to challenge the “rigged results”.

In an audio message on Friday, Mr Khan lauded the nation and all party workers for their resilience and effort in responding to the call of party founder chairman Imran Khan, resulting in a record number of votes.

“The nation polled around 30 million votes for the PTI-backed candidates,” he added, noting that the nation had shattered several political parties in the election.

Urging candidates and polling agents to approach courts over the altered results, Mr Khan emphasised that the results had not yet been consolidated.

In a video message, PTI Central Punjab general secretary Hammad Azhar asserted that Nawaz Sharif, along with his brother, family members, and key PML-N leaders, had suffered a massive defeat in the election.

Highlighting that PTI candidates were winning by a significant margin of 50,000 to 100,000 votes but were “defeated with one stroke of the pen”, the PTI leader claimed the party possessed evidence of rigging. He said that the party had all the evidence of rigging and would approach the courts, aiming to eventually form governments both at the Centre and in the provinces.

“I will speak to the nation and party workers on Saturday (today) and announce a new strategy,” Mr Azhar stated.

As the PTI claimed that the powers that be engineering the election results of NA-64 (Gujrat), contes­ted by Parvez Elahi’s wife Qaisera Elahi, PTI leader Moonis Elahi tweeted that the Form-45 collected from all 205 polling stations exp­lained that his mother got 100,218 votes, while PML-Q chief Shujaat Hussain’s son Salik Hussain garnered only 18,716 votes.

Eventually, the results up­­loaded by the ECP ex­­p­l­ained that Ms Qaisera Ela­hi bagged 80,946 votes, while Salik Hussain’s votes rose to 105,205.

Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2024