SKARDU (Web Desk) – Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) emerged as the largest political party in the Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) Legislative Assembly elections and appeared set to form government after a powerful turnout in 24 constituencies led the party to win 11 seats, according to the unofficial and unconfirmed results, local media reported on Tuesday.
PPP was badly trampled in the election as the party’s former GB chief minister Mehdi Shah could not retain his own seat. The only seat claimed by the party was GBLA-12, Skardu-6where Imran Nadeem won with 10,465 votes.
PML-N;
GBLA-1, Gilgit-1: Jafarullah Khan won with 6835 votes
GBLA-2, Gilgit-2: Hafeezur Rehman with 1096 votes
GBLA-3, Gilgit-3: Dr. Iqbal won with 7525 votes.
GBLA-6, Hunza Nagar-3: Mir Ghazanfar won with 6834 votes
GBLA-9, Skardu-3: Haji Fida Muhammed won with 4100 votes
GBLA-11, Skardu-5: Iqbal Hassan won with 5564 votes
GBLA-13, Astore-1: Farman Ali with 5881 votes
GBLA-14, Astore-2: Barkat Jameel with 3674 votes
GBLA-22, Ghanche-1: Ibrahim Sanai won with 4373 votes
GBLA-23, Ghanche-2: Ghulam Hussain won with 6500 votes
GBLA-24, Ghanche-3: Muhammed Shafeeq won with 5186 votes.
MWM made its presence felt with two seats victory. The party’s Haji Rizwan notched up victory in GBLA-5, Hunza Nagar-2 with 2360 votes. The party’s other successful candidate is Imtiaz Haider from GBLA-8, Skardu-2 with 10,532 votes.
Meantime, two seats went to independent candidates as well. One of them is Muhammed Fida who grabbed GBLA-20, Ghazar-2 with 4397 votes.
Islami Tehreek’s Muhammed Ali Sheikh bagged GBLA-4, Hunza Nagar-1 seat.Balawaristan National Front’s Nawaz Khan Naji succeeded in GBLA-19, Ghazar-1 with 5239 votes.
A one-off situation arose in GBLA-7, Skardu-1 where PTI and PML-N had a tie. After the first count of ballots from all polling stations, the PTI’s Raja Jalal had 53-vote lead.
After 600 postal ballots were included in the count, Raja Jalal’s lead shrank to one-vote lead. On this, the PML-N candidate demanded the re-count. On this, the Returning Officer (RO) had consultations with the ECP high-ups and sealed his office and results.
The ROs assured the two parties to take into account all votes including the rejected votes in accordance with the law at 10am this morning.
The PTI workers staged a protest demo outside the Returning Officer (RO) office over ECP’s decision to stop the result. Pakistan Army officers held negotiations with the PTI activisits and brought them round to return to their homes with assurances of across-the-board transparency.
b. The result of GBLA-10, Skardu-4 has been stopped on request by Islami Tehreek. The announcement of this consiitenucy will be made after a recount in the morning in the presence of all concerned parties under supervision of the army.
Islami Tehreek’s Sikandar Ali and MWM’s Raja Nasir were in the fray in Skardu-4. According to unofficial results, MWM’s candidate had 135-vote lead on his rival. But, the rival candidate expressed reservations over the results and submitted an application for a recount.
On his plea, the Returning Officer (RO) acknowledging his privilege, stopped the result.
Earlier yesterday, the polling in all seven districts of the region began at 8am local time (0300 GMT) and continued till 5pm without any break.
Ahead of the elections, the electoral material was delivered to polling stations under army supervision.
The army officers were delegated special magisterial powers to control the law and order and act against those violating election laws.
