LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan has informed the Chief Justice of Pakistan that his party had accepted the May 11 general elections for the sake of continuation of democracy but it is not ready to accept “massive riggings”.

Addressing a news conference at his Zaman Park residence on Tuesday, Mr Khan announced that his party would take to streets if it did not get justice from election tribunals and the Supreme Court. But he parried a question about launching a “civil disobedience movement” if the PTI’s demands were not met even after street protests.

Directly addressing the Chief Justice of Pakistan, the PTI chief said his party had demanded only a detailed audit of polling results in four constituencies through forensic examination of fingerprints, but regrettably the Supreme Court had not taken up the matter which could have been addressed in five days.

He said he and his party had struggled for the independence of judiciary and had pinned high hopes on the court.

“There is no other important matter pending with the Supreme Court than the stealing of people’s mandate and wellbeing of democracy,” he said.

Citing the example of NA-252 where the PTI candidate had collected donations and got a recount with thumb impressions at 69 selected polling stations, Mr Khan said the results had surprised everyone. The recount at the polling stations showed that only 6,000 of the total 86,000 votes polled were found to be genuine. “One person had put his thumb impression on 35 votes. That person, already identified, needed to be given exemplary punishment so that no-one else would dare to commit wrongdoings in elections,” he added.

The PTI chief said he was stressing on the recount of votes in four constituencies to ensure that the next elections should be fought on the basis of performance and not on “excellence in rigging”. He said that his and Hamid Khan’s case was pending with the election tribunal, but the judge resigned.

He said he would like to know under whose pressure the election tribunal judge had resigned and no new judge was being appointed despite the fact that the Election Commission of Pakistan had stated that all election-related complaints would be addressed within four months.

Mr Khan said about 400 election complaints, 64 of them lodged by PTI candidates, were pending with election tribunals even after the passage of four months.

Answering a question the PTI chairman said the same rigging practices would be repeated in the coming local body elections if the general election rigging complaints were not addressed.

He said genuine democracy required transparent and fair elections and not the May 11-type elections.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he said, the PTI government would hold free and fair local body elections with the use of biometrics and electronic voting system.

Criticising the PML-N for pushing lower middle class and middle class against the wall by imposing a large number of indirect taxes, Mr Khan said the federal government was helping a small affluent segment of society.

He said the government was in no mood to tax three million people who owned large houses and luxury vehicles. As the PML-N government was not fulfilling its promises made in the run-up to the May 11 elections, he said, people had started reacting and elected a PTI candidate in the PML-N stronghold of Faisalabad.

He congratulated PTI’s Khurram Shahzad on winning the PP-72 seat, which the PML-N had been winning for the past 20 years. He lauded the PTI Punjab leadership for motivating workers and eventually snatching the seat from the PML-N.

Imran Khan said the PML-N government had not consulted the PTI on the appointment of NAB chairman, decided by the PML-N and PPP. “If the NAB chairman is appointed by the PML-N and PPP, how he would be able to make both of them accountable,” he asked.

He said that Asif Ali Zardari’s sister Faryal Talpur was being considered for the chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee and asked who would take up the corruption of the past five years.

The PTI chief called for bringing back Mr Zardari’s Rs6 billion as had been done in Libya, Egypt and Switzerland.

He said the losses caused by government’s incompetence and corruption were being passed on to poor masses.

PTI secretary general Jahangir Tareen, party’s Punjab president Ejaz Chaudhry and general secretary Dr Yasmin Rashid and other PTI office-bearers were present on the occasion.