ISLAMABAD, May 24: The Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) on Friday demanded of the chief justice of Pakistan to take notice of the alleged rigging in the elections against its party candidates and order an investigation to address their concerns.

Addressing a sit-in held at D-Chowk through a video link from Lahore, PTI chairman Imran Khan said, “We are not demanding anything big but just an inquiry into the conduct of returning officers of the constituencies from where we have confirmed cases of rigging.”

He added, “We are demanding of you (CJ) this inquiry because the ROs directly come under your control.”

Mr Khan repeated his demand of re-counting of votes in 25 constituencies where the party had collected credible evidence against the ROs who managed the results in favour of the opposing candidates.

He said at least the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) can conduct a detailed inquiry in four constituencies based on thumb impressions of the voters which would help determine the true picture whether votes cast there were real or fake.

He said today it was the issue of PTI candidates but for the future of democracy in the country if the same practice continued people would not come out for voting.

The sit-in was not an impressive show compared to its previous gatherings at the same venue. On May 13, just two days after the general elections, the PTI had managed to bring out quite a good number of people at the same place.

When asked, a PTI office-bearer, who handles the party’s media office, refused to accept the drop in the number of protesters.

He said the extremely hot weather and inadequate media campaign for the sitting might be the reason behind the participants’ lack of enthusiasm.

Secondly, in the last ‘Dharna’, party leaders had generally spoken about the rigging but on Friday there was a marked increase in their bitterness against the ECP.

One by one, the speakers targeted chief election commissioner Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim for not taking cognizance of their complaints.

The PTI senior vice-president Amin Aslam, who contested elections from NA-57 Attock, and is contesting his election results, said the PTI trusted ECP in the hope of free and fair elections but the commission failed ‘us’ in the end.

Mr Aslam claimed that until 8am on May 12, he was declared the winner with a lead of 2,000 votes, but eventually he was declared the loser.

Yasmin Rashid of the PTI, who was a candidate against Nawaz Sharif in Lahore, said the party was only demanding recounting of votes, and it was beyond her comprehension why the ECP wasn’t accepting the demand.

Other party leaders, including Javed Hashmi, Jehangir Tareen and Hamid Khan, also asked the ECP to listen to their complaints.