PESHAWAR: Senior Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader and former provincial minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra on Monday said he would petition the Peshawar High Court against the Election Commission of Pakistan’s move to ask the provincial government to stop the anti-corruption establishment from probing the alleged rigging in the provincial assembly elections.

Last week, ECP secretary Omar Hamid Khan wrote to the provincial government, declaring the ACE inquiry into the alleged PK-79 poll rigging on the complaint of Mr Jhagra an “interference in the commission’s mandate.”

During a news conference here, Mr Jhagra said the ECP secretary’s letter to the KP government was illegal, so he would challenge it in the high court.

He also asked the speaker of the provincial assembly to form a committee to investigate the alleged poll rigging.

Says presiding officers should be quizzed

“I ask the PTI lawmakers, especially the speaker, to raise this issue and form a select committee of the house for the rigging probe,” he said.

The PTI leader said that the proposed committee should look into the complaints of the party’s members and other rigging victims besides calling the relevant presiding officers for questioning.

He said that around 600 days had passed since the Feb 8 general elections were held but the ECP had done nothing regarding the complaints of rigging on nine assembly seats from the provincial capital and 20 from across the province.

Mr Jhagra also complained that election tribunals had not heard those complaints in the last 20 months.

He claimed that the two presiding officers submitted written statements during the ACE investigation, declaring that the documents carrying their signatures were not actually signed by them, but the ECP didn’t do anything for 20 months.

“Now, it [ECP] has suddenly woken up and wrote a letter to the KP government demanding a halt to the ECP inquiry into the alleged poll rigging,” he said.

The PTI leader said that the ECP, as the electoral watchdog, didn’t act on the complaints and instead asked the KP government to stop the inquiry.

He wondered whether the ECP’s job was to end “poll corruption” or brush it under the rug.

Mr Jhagra said that ACE inquiry should not be stopped and instead, the statements submitted by both presiding officers should be made public.

He said that if the presiding officers were not responsible for rigging, then the returning officers and district returning officers should be acted against for allegedly changing election results.

Published in Dawn, September 23rd, 2025