ISLAMABAD: Salman Akram Raja, a leader from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), alleged on Friday that election rigging took place at the offices of the returning officers during the 2024 elections. Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, Raja presented Forms 45 to the international media, claiming they demonstrated evidence of rigging in the recent election.
Raja characterized the election results as an assault on Pakistan’s democracy, contending that “factitious Forms 47” were created, which he claimed did not correlate with the actual votes cast on February 8. According to Raja, Forms 47 delivered at the Returning Officer (RO) offices were tampered with and discarded, leading to the creation of “completely fictitious results” in at least 90 National Assembly constituencies.
He expressed concern that if state officials responsible for safeguarding the election process could be compromised, the credibility of elections in Pakistan would be undermined. Raja warned that failure to address these allegations could have dire consequences for democracy in the country.
PTI Spokesman Raoof Hasan asserted that the party had won 177 seats in the National Assembly, emphasizing discrepancies between the results in Form 47 and Form 45. He highlighted significant differences in the number of votes cast for National Assembly and provincial assembly seats, with instances where the number of rejected votes exceeded the margin of victory.
During the press conference, PTI’s Seemabia Tahir played a video purportedly showing instances of rigging in the February 8 polls. Shandana Gulzar, also from PTI, delivered a presentation on alleged irregularities in the election, citing examples such as PTI receiving 1.25 million votes in Karachi but failing to secure a single seat, and Jamaat-i-Islami obtaining 700,000 votes without winning a National Assembly seat in Karachi.
Gulzar further claimed that by 3 am on February 9, PTI had secured 154 seats in the National Assembly, while PML-N and PPP had each won 47 seats. The allegations presented by PTI members underscore the intensifying controversy surrounding the integrity of the 2024 elections in Pakistan.
