leadership and its chief Imran Khan not only failed to present any evidence of rigging committed by above-mentioned individuals and institutions but he even failed to exactly explain as to how rigging was carried out or what mechanism was adopted to rig the elections to defeat his party.
However, available evidence and record speak otherwise and establish some undeniable facts. For making government in the Centre a political party needs at least 50 percent seats in the National Assembly whereas according to the official record, the PTI was non-existent in more than 50 percent NA constituencies during 2013 general elections. In more than 50% constituencies the PTI either failed to even place a candidate or security deposits of its candidates were confiscated. There were 40 NA constituencies where the PTI had failed to even place a candidate. In more than 90 constituencies, security deposits of contesting PTI candidates were confiscated. In dozens of such constituencies, the PTI even failed to secure one percent of total polled votes.
However, under a well-devised political strategy, the PTI continued to hurl allegations of rigging against its opponents and critics to give an impression that it is a national-level party. This, however, worked according to some experts and the PTI succeeded to the extent to creating an impression of being a big party. Analysts say, however, the by-elections and LB polls results show that this impression was fake and will disperse soon if the party will not bring about basic changes in lives of common KP people, if it will not stop dancing to tunes of others, if it failed to start serious and mature politics and to show performance as a constructive, rational and vibrant opposition party.
All the allegations levelled by the PTI were thoroughly probed by the judicial commission. Judicial commission pointed out some deficiencies in the election process but discussed each and every such deficiency separately and held in categorical words that none of these deficiencies or lacuna could change result of any constituency and could never be considered as rigging. The judicial commission did recommend correcting these wrongs. Almost all the election petitions filed by the PTI alleging rigging were dismissed by the relevant election tribunals except three. Even these three decisions were given on basis of wrongly noted down CNIC numbers by elections staff and unmatched thumb impressions. Senior lawyer Salman Akram Raja has recently stated that even if the latest elections will be analysed in this way, there would be many wrongly handwritten CNIC numbers as well as many thumb impressions would not match as same is technically impossible and this never means rigging.
The ECP has been vindicated on all forums, by top most judicial forums as well as by the voters of Pakistan. It is, however, a question mark that whether the PTI and its chief Imran Khan will apologise to nation and ECP for his so many allegations which all proved wrong.