LAHORE, May 12: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan alleged on Sunday that the elections had been rigged and pledged to produce a ‘white paper’ on poll irregularities and flaws.

“We have information that electoral results have been changed in different districts. There are reports the administration misused its authority and interfered with the electoral process. We are collecting evidence,” the injured PTI leader said in a video message from his hospital bed a day after his party received an unexpected drubbing at the hands of the PML-N in Punjab.

Allegations have already been made by others, including Balochistan National Party-Mengal leader Sardar Akhtar Mengal, who said the announcement of results in his area was being blocked and delayed. In Karachi, many political parties, among them Jamaat-i-lslami, boycotted the voting on Saturday and on Sunday PPP’s Faisal Karim Kundi tweeted: “Well planned game by the hidden hands. Time will tell how winning seats were converted to defeat.”

Imran Khan in his message vowed to play a better opposition (than Nawaz Sharif) inside and outside the parliament. But he regretted rigging had taken place in a landmark election that saw an unprecedented number of voters to turn out to “create a new Pakistan”.

“The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has admitted to this and re-polling in a Karachi constituency (NA-250) was proof (of the electoral irregularities),” he said.

He alleged his candidates had started losing (in Punjab) soon after Nawaz Sharif had made his (victory) speech late on Saturday. “The polling staff stopped counting ballots as soon as Nawaz Sharif started his speech and (then) our candidates started losing,” he contended.

Allegations from a visibly weak Imran Khan came in the wake of delayed results, especially in Lahore where the PTI was being billed as a threat to PML-N domination. Early trends showed PTI’s candidates leading in various constituencies, which was not out of sync with the size of the camps set up by the party outside the polling stations.

The build-up was promising and expectations were raised. Imran Khan’s supporters eagerly pointed out the ‘pro-PTI’ tone of the media houses. If they were talking about ‘tabdeeli’ (change), and if the senior EC officials concurred with them in supportive remarks that blatantly rejected the old incumbents, it could only mean that Mr Khan was on his way to mount a serious challenge to the incumbents, Punjab being crucial to his campaign for a change.

The PTI has emerged as the single largest party in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa both at the national and provincial levels, but trails far behind the PML-N in Punjab where it was expecting to do much better.

PTI supporters claimed that the solitary seat the party had won in Lahore was secured by Shafqat Mehmood only after he raised an alarm in the media.

In another constituency, which took awfully long to yield results and where some disturbances at polling stations had been reported on the polling day, PML-N’s Saad Rafiq was declared victorious. The tally showed the PML-N candidate beating Hamid Khan by about 40,000 votes even though the latter had a very respectable total of more than 80,000 votes.

This was the same area that had thrown up a ‘mysterious’ result in the 2002 elections. Then, early results favoured Akram Zaki of the PML-N in a close race with PPP’s Naveed Chaudhry and PML-Q’s Humayun Akhtar Khan. Later into the night, Humayun Akhtar was declared winner, to the chagrin of PML-N supporters who back then said that their protest had been subdued by the absence of the party leadership (the Sharifs) which was in exile at the time.

The PTI supporters held a demonstration in the constituency on Sunday, chanting the election had been stolen from them.

There were sporadic protests elsewhere, such as the one lodged by singer-politician Abrarul Haq, a PTI candidate who took on Ahsan Iqbal of the PML-N in Narowal. Mr Abrar said the poll in his area had been decided at gunpoint.

Imran Khan did question the credibility of the election, but he gave no hint if his party planned to launch street protests against vote-rigging as he had warned at a press conference last month.

Some PTI supporters Dawn talked to said the protest could have been much stronger if Mr Khan had been up and about. They said there were a few seats and a few issues that needed to be addressed urgently. Like the Lodhran seat the PTI stalwart Jahangir Tareen ‘was winning’ until he lost it to an invisible late-night scramble to an independent candidate.

Mr Tareen’s rival for the seat from the PPP, Mirza Nasir Beg, tells Dawn it was far from a transparent and fair election. Whereas he admits fighting on a PPP ticket in times such as these was tantamount to fighting a jihad, he is also frank in pointing out the large-scale rigging that was allowed in his constituency – NA-154.

“We were promised the army but we didn’t even get sufficient police protection,” Mr Beg said by telephone. “There were people stamping ballot papers at will.”

The losing PPP candidate says he has some papers signed by the returning officers at two polling stations to support his claim. He holds the same arm-twisting and cheating which took place in his area could well have been repeated elsewhere to deny the people a free vote and some candidates their due place in the assemblies.

In spite of his reservations on the fairness of polling results, Imran Khan termed the high voter turnout as a step forward for democracy in the country. He congratulated the people for taking part in the electoral process in such a big number.

“Even those who had never voted in their entire lives had come out to vote. Defeat and victory are part of the game but the passion of our youth has taken away the pain of my loss. I also thank women who came out in such a large number for the first time to participate in the democratic process to bring a change. We may have lost but we have laid foundation for the change and no one can reverse it,” Imran Khan said as he promised to make “Khyber Pakhtunkhawa an ideal Pakistan” if his party succeeded in forming its government in Peshawar.