CHAKWAL: Police on Saturday used tear-gas shells to disperse the protesting PTI-backed candidates and their supporters when they staged a protest outside the office of the returning officer (RO) in Talagang against the alleged rigging in the Feb 8 polls.

The local PTI leadership alleged that the police also beat some of the workers with sticks and later arrested them.

It all started when two PTI-backed candidates Nisar Ahmed and Mr Surkhru with their supporters went to the RO office to get certified copies of the results, but they could not obtain them as the official was not present in the office.

After getting annoyed over the absence of the RO, the PTI workers started chanting slogans. In the meanwhile, heavy contingents of police and Rangers were called in. When the protesters refused to leave the premises, the police personnel started baton-charge and fired tear gas shells on them. PTI’s Talagang president Nisar Ahmed alleged that scores of workers had been arrested by the police.

All PTI-backed candidates have announced that they would challenge the results to get justice.

Talking to Dawn at his residence, PTI-backed candidate and veteran columnist Ayaz Amir attributed the election results to massive rigging which according to him he never witnessed in his life.

“Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything,” said Mr Amir while highlighting discrepancies in the unofficial results announced by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

“I went to the RO office at 6pm on polling day so that I could observe the vote counts. After two hours, police cops forcibly evicted me”, said Mr Amir as he showed a video footage in which police cops were seen forcing him to evict the premises.

Mr Amir claimed that as per forms 45 of all polling stations in his constituency, he had bagged 154,825 against 128,914 votes of his rival retired Major Tahir Iqbal of the PML-N. However, he said, the final result declared him a loser and the PML-N candidate a winner with a big margin.

“They have broken the records of mathematics. How on earth the PPP candidate was given 74,300 votes in Form 47 while in Form 45, he got only 13,796 votes”, Mr Amir said.

The results of NA 59-Talagang and its two sub-constituencies were also termed fake by PTI candidates.

NA-59 was won by PML-N’s Sardar Ghulam Abbas, who grabbed 141,680 votes as per Form 47 against his rival PTI’s Roman Ahmed’s 129,716 votes. But Roman Ahmed claims that according to the calculation of Forms 45 of all 467 polling stations, he had actually got 145,839 votes while his rival Sardar Ghulam Abbas got 113,164.

“In reality, I won this constituency by a heavy margin of 32,675 votes”, he told Dawn.

Mr Roman who is still in Saudi Arabia did not come to Pakistan for fear of arrest.

Published in Dawn, February 11th, 2024