LAHORE, June 4: The Jamaat-i-Islami has asked the government to make public the April 30 presidential referendum record so that journalists, lawyers, intellectuals and human rights activists could check the validity of facts.

The Jamaat has also sent a copy of its white paper containing “undeniable” evidence of rigging, fraud and official interference to President Gen Pervez Musharraf as well as to human rights organizations and other opinion-making forums.

A JI spokesman has shown his surprise over the US attitude towards the “bogus” referendum in Pakistan. “The US silence over the referendum and other related factors is meaningful.”

The party claims that before the referendum it had dispatched forms to local JI leaders to fill them up in the light of interviews of voters and officials at their respective polling stations.

It says that for 70 million eligible voters over and above the age of 18 years as many as 130 million ballot papers were printed. There were no arrangements to print a huge quantity of ballot papers at the state-owned security printing press so the task was assigned to private parties which printed at least 50 million ballots, it adds.