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Lahore: Pakistan’s general elections have concluded amid allegations of violence and rigging. Voting stopped in Pakistan at 5 pm. However, details of voting percentage are still being collected. According to Pakistan’s Geo TV, the counting of votes has started one hour after the end of the elections i.e. at 6 pm. The results will be declared one by one by 10 am on 9th February. After the completion of the elections, the party of former prime minister and former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is serving a prison sentence in several cases including corruption, on Thursday claimed that voting began in various areas of Punjab province without its agents as the police had made it easy to spot rigging. Many of his agents were taken into custody.
The Supreme Court of Pakistan had upheld the Election Commission’s decision to cancel the cricket ‘bat’ symbol of Khan’s party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Because of this, candidates of Khan’s party are trying their luck in the election field as independents. PTI accused the police of clearing its election camps. “Several voting took place in various constituencies of Lahore, including the constituencies of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president Nawaz Sharif, his brother Shehbaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz,” party leader Wasim Ahmed told reporters in Lahore. Voting began without PTI’s election agent at the centres.
PTI made this allegation
The PTI leader claimed that when the presiding officer gave permission to start the voting process in Nawaz Sharif’s Lahore-based constituency NA-130, only the PML-N election agent was present. He claimed that the police started detaining the party’s election agent even before he reached the polling booth. “Through this ploy, the authorities want to ensure that the election agents of our candidates are not aware of the actual voting status at the booth, so that it becomes easier for them to rig the elections,” Ahmed said, PTI alleged. That this tactic has been adopted to prevent its candidates from contesting the elections. Khan is currently in prison in corruption cases and is therefore barred from contesting elections.
Imran is serving a 14 year sentence
He is serving a minimum prison sentence of 14 years. He has been sentenced in three separate cases in five days last week. There are still around 140 different cases registered against him. In view of voting in the country, the government has stopped mobile and internet services, due to which voters are facing problems in voting. However, high voting percentage is expected in most of the constituencies of Punjab state. Meanwhile, the Pakistan Human Rights Council has expressed strong concern over the shutdown of mobile and internet services in Pakistan on the day of voting. Pakistan Peoples Party co-chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has also demanded restoration of mobile and internet services.
