With only two more weeks to go before polls, two political parties have found themselves caught up in cases of candidates supposedly withdrawing from the electoral battle in favour of others. The reality, as concluded by fact-checking platform iVerify Pakistan, is that neither of the alleged withdrawals came from the parties concerned.

Posts circulating on social media on Tuesday claimed that MQM-P withdrew its candidate from Malir’s NA-230 constituency in favour of ASWJ’s Aurangzeb Farooqui. The posts did not identify the time, date or place where the political gathering in the attached video took place.

In the video, people with badges bearing the party’s election symbol of ‘kite’ could be seen sitting with Farooqui and a person wearing a turban. The post did not identify anyone apart from Farooqui.

The man with the turban said he was standing down in favour of Farooqui, who thanked the former — identifying him as a Mufti Riaz — and the alleged MQM-P officials for their support for NA-230.

To corroborate, the iVerify platform examined the list of National Assembly candidates issued by the ECP for the upcoming polls. Analysing the list showed Farooqui contesting from the Pakistan Rah-i-Haq Party’s platform, while one Riaz Raza appears as an independent candidate, but there is no mention of any MQM-P candidate.

The platform concluded that “the claim circulating on social media is false as the candidate who withdrew in the shared clip is an independent candidate and not from the MQM-P.”

‘Breakthrough’ for PML-N?

Similarly, numerous media outlets reported that PTI candidate Mehr Muhammed Waseem withdrew from Lahore’s NA-119 constituency in favour of Maryam Nawaz, on Sunday.

The iVerify platform examined the ECP’s NA candidate list and found no one with that name for NA-119. Crosschecking with the PTI’s released list of NA candidates did show independent contestant Mr Shahzad Farooq for NA-119.

Dawn reporter Adnan Sheikh told the platform that the original news of a “breakthrough” with the PTI candidate standing down was shared by Marriyum Aurangzeb with journalists.

The shared message was traced to a Sunday post on the PML-N’s official X account which said: “Major breakthrough for PML-N in NA-119 constituency of National Assembly from Lahore. PTI’s national and provincial assembly candidate and supporter withdrew in favour of PML-N. PTI ticketholder Mehr Muhammad Waseem joined PML-N.” iVerify pointed out that the message only identified Waseem as a PTI ticketholder, not a candidate from NA-119.

The platform said it “next investigated the official lists of PTI-affiliated independent candidates for the national and Punjab assemblies, that were released by the party. A thorough search of the lists showed that Waseem was not listed as a PTI-affiliated independent candidate for the upcoming elections.”

iVerify concluded that the viral claim was false as “Waseem is not a candidate for the NA-119 constituency as per the ECP records. He is also not present in the PTI’s officially issued list of candidates associated with the party while Farooq is mentioned on the list as the candidate for NA-119.”

This fact check has been published in partnership with iVerify Pakistan — a project of CEJ and UNDP

Published in Dawn, January 25th, 2024