LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan has said that PML-N’s second wicket has fallen but it took the chief of a political party to struggle for two-and-a-half-years and spend millions of rupees to get justice. He said PML-N’s third and fourth wicket would fall soon.

He announced that the PTI would contest the NA-122 by-election with full force under “neutral umpires” only.

Mr Khan was speaking to the highly charged supporters at his Zaman Park residence here on Saturday after a tribunal set aside election of Ayaz Sadiq in NA-122 and that of Mohsin Latif in PP-147 and ordered re-polling. He congratulated the party leaders and workers whose struggle during the 126-day sit-in had materialised.

Mr Khan lambasted the Election Commission of Pakistan and returning officers for allegedly playing a fixed match in favour of PML-N and added that the judicial commission’s report had exposed them all by identifying 40 lapses and mismanagement on their part.

He also condemned the Nadra chairman for charging him Rs2.6m and still failing in verifying the voters’ thumb impressions on ballot papers.

He said the judicial commission had identified that four ECP provincial members were responsible for the lapses and mismanagement in the 2013 elections. “ECP offi­cials should be ashamed now and resign voluntarily, otherwise a sit-in would be staged against them,” he added.

The PTI chief said the tribunal’s decision had proved that he did not waste country’s two years and put the blame on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for the same. “Now the people of Pakistan have come to know that why Nawaz Sharif was not opening the four constituencies for investigation,” he asserted. “Every constituency opened from now onwards will prove that rigging was committed in the general elections.”

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2015

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