ISLAMABAD – Former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and the Jamiat Ulama-e-Pakistan (JUI-F) have declared protests across the country today, Sunday, condemning alleged “rigging” in the recent national elections.
The 2024 national elections in Pakistan witnessed significant delays in the counting process, sparking suspicions of electoral manipulation and triggering protests from various political factions who claimed their mandate was compromised.
As the final results trickled in late Saturday, independent candidates, predominantly allied with PTI, secured 101 seats in the National Assembly, as per official results released by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).
Meanwhile, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) won 74 seats. PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar Khan asserted on Saturday that the party’s victories had been overturned into defeats on 22 National Assembly seats, including three in Islamabad, four in Sindh, and the remaining in Punjab province.
PTI issued a call for “peaceful protests” across various parts of Punjab against alleged rigging, scheduling demonstrations at Liberty Chowk in Lahore, Ghanta Ghar in Faisalabad, and the Election Commission of Pakistan’s office in Rawalpindi, all at 2:00 p.m.
The JUI-F, a staunch rival of PTI, also announced sit-ins in various locations in Sindh to protest against alleged rigging. The religious party urged its supporters to stage a sit-in on the main highways across Pakistan’s southern Sindh province on Sunday to disrupt key road links.
On Saturday, Maulana Rashid Mehmood Soomro, the provincial leader of JUI-F, led a sit-in outside a temporary ECP office in Sindh’s Sukkur district, alleging manipulation of election results in favour of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in Sindh.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s election regulatory authority, a day earlier, ordered repeat voting at 43 polling stations in three national and provincial constituencies due to incidents of theft and destruction of polling materials.
