The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Monday, while responding to criticism from political parties for the delay in issuing local body poll results, said it is a “complicated matter which takes time” and assured that results that have been compiled were being dispatched to the returning officers’ (RO) office.
Speaking to the media, Provincial Election Commissioner for Sindh Ijaz Anwar Chauhan said the delay in results was caused by the need to compile the results.
“This is a complicated process and it takes time to prepare the result of one union council.”
Chauhan explained that each UC had four wards and an average of 20 polling stations. He furthered that if the result of even one polling station was unavailable, the result of the entire UC would be incomplete.
Meanwhile, Jamaat-e-Islami, PTI and PPP raised questions regarding the delay in the election results and demanded that the results be released soon.
PPP Karachi President Saeed Ghani feared that the entire election process might become controversial due to the delay, and urged the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to finish its work as soon as possible.
JI Karachi leader and mayoral candidate Hafiz Naeemur Rehman claimed that election results were being changed due to rigging and that the party was not provided Forms 11 and 12. He added that the deputy commissioner had called for a recount.
Rehman said that if the results were tampered with, he would stage a sit-in against the theft of Karachi’s mandate.
PTI workers protested outside the offices of the deputy commissioner west and the district returning officer (DRO). The protesters alleged that the police had become former president and PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari’s force and were aiding in changing the election results.
Earlier, ECP sources said that the preliminary election results would be released on Monday.
In Hyderabad, according to the unofficial results, the PPP seems to have swept the LG polls in all the nine districts of the Hyderabad Division except for a couple of upsets at the hands of the PTI and the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA).
The JI spokesperson claimed that his party bagged more than 100 seats, PPP over 80 seats and the PTI 50 seats in Karachi.
As per the unconfirmed results so far, no party had been able to secure a clear majority for the mayor’s crown.
There were some wards where members had won by 31 and 150 votes as per unofficial results.
