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Thursday March 28, 2024

PTI won’t return to controversial assemblies: Imran

Says govt should form Judicial Commission; big fraud has come to the fore in NA-122

By our correspondents
January 25, 2015
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Saturday said that the government should constitute a judicial commission in a straightforward manner and PTI lawmakers would not return to the controversial assemblies.
He said that a big fraud had been unearthed in the NA-122 constituency.
He warned the government that he had enough street power to shut down the entire country if it did not constitute the judicial commission to probe the alleged rigging in the 2013 general election.
Talking to the media here after his return from Saudi Arabia, where he performed Umrah along with his spouse, Imran said his party was giving time to the government but it should not be construed that they had stepped back from their demand [for a judicial commission].
“Instead of playing hide and seek, the government must announce the commission, otherwise we have the street power to bring the entire country to a grinding halt,” the PTI chairman asserted.
He contended that if the poll petitions taken up by the election tribunals were decided only by the proposed judicial commission, 2015 could be the election year.
He maintained that if the PML-N had not rigged the 2013 general elections, then it should not be afraid of the judicial commission.
“We have proof of the additional printing of ballot papers, that’s why the rulers are afraid of a judicial commission,” he claimed.
Imran pointed out that a big electoral fraud had been unearthed in NA-122 in 18 months and more would be exposed if the commission was formed.
The PTI chief alleged that former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and Justice (retd) Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday were behind the returning officers and controlled them.
Imran claimed that he will prove the involvement of both Iftikhar Chaudhry and Ramday before the proposed judicial commission. He noted that ex-president Asif Ali Zardari and Aitzaz Ahsan had also said that the elections were rigged.
All political parties, he claimed, had said that the elections had been rigged in Punjab and Sindh. He said 40,000 bogus votes were polled in each constituency in favour of the ruling PML-N.
He also demanded that proceedings should be initiated against Iftikhar Chaudhry under Article 6 of the Constitution for what he termed his ‘betraying of democracy’.
The PTI chairman is poised for a legal battle with the former chief justice who has filed a Rs20 billion defamation case against him for dragging him into the electoral rigging controversy and hence damaging his reputation and integrity.
Imran said he would take Rs20 billion from the son of the former chief justice, who had made a lot of money.
He said they would present the PTI and PML-N’s respective drafts before the nation, and show whose document was better. He said anchorpersons could decide which draft was better.
Imran said his party would take part in the Senate elections only from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly.