Imran Khan back to square one Comment

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan is back to square one as though he verbally accepted the Inquiry Commission’s report on 2013 General Election, but in his press conference he reiterated all the allegations of rigging which have been rejected by the Judicial Commission after discussing them at length.
Imran Khan praised the judges of the Judicial Commission but it was lip service only as he repeated his allegations by alleging the provincial members of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) of rigging the election but this time he introduced another term, i.e. post-poll rigging.
Imran also repeated the mantra of printing of extra ballot papers and missing of Form XV, an allegation which has been elaborated in the findings of the Judicial Commission and PTI’s plea has been rejected that neither did printing of extra ballot papers affect the election nor did the missing of Form XV yet PTI chief stuck to his allegations. Perhaps he has no other option left but to keep on repeating his rejected allegations in order to keep his supports enthusiastic and loyal.
In the Saturday’s presser Imran once again accused the Returning Officers, ECP and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz of rigging 2013 election, a thing which he failed to prove before the Judicial Commission.
Imran had all praise for the Chief Justice of Pakistan and the other members of the Judicial Commission but he only accepted the finding of the Judicial Commission verbally. After praising the Judicial Commission, Imran rejected its entire findings one by one and took a stance which he had taken before the formation of the commission. He also did not spare ex-chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary and said that the CJ who took suo motos on the prices of tomatoes did not take up his petition.
Imran said that the Form XV were missing in one third of the constituencies which has been proved in the Judicial Commission but did not tell the nation that the Judicial Commission has given the verdict that missing of Form XV could not affect the election nor could it be proved that the missing Form XV helped PLM-N steal the mandate of PTI.
Similarly, Khan once again reiterated the allegation that extra ballot papers were printed to benefit PML-N and he specially gave example of NA-125 and quoted the commission’s finding that one RO had told the commission that he kept the extra-ballot papers with himselfwhich should have been given to the Presiding Officers. But Khan hesitated to divulge that in the same report which he was quoting the commission held that there was no mala fide in printing of extra ballot papers and missing Form XV and there was no direct evidence that extra ballot papers were misused in favour of the PML-N.
Khan also sought resignations from the Members of the ECP after holding them responsible for what he called “post-poll rigging” as, according to Khan, the four members of the ECP who were nominated by the parliamentary panel as a result of 18th Amendment rejected 80 percent of the election petitions on technical basis. Khan did not tell the public that legally the petition of Hamid Khan vs Khawaja Saad Raffique should have been knocked down on technical basis but the ECP allowed undue favours to Hamid Khan despite lapses on technical grounds.
Khan in his presser held that Returning Officers, the ECP and PML-N were in connivance during the election and rigged the 2013 election. This was the allegation which Khan had been hurling for the past two years and agreed to withdraw in case of adverse findings of the judicial commission but again repeated the same allegations as sticking with the rigging allegations is the only lifeline for the PTI’s chief.
Khan praised the judges of the Judicial commission on the main stream media but PTI’s known and declared supporters on the social networking sites who usually run campaigns at the behest of PTI on social media have been busy in vilification of the judges of the Judicial Commission in such words which cannot be reproduced here.