JI demands ECP de-notify results of ‘controversial vote recount’

Karachi: Karachi Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) chief Hafiz Naeemur Rehman has demanded of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to refuse to buckle under “pressure by the Pakistan Peoples Party” (PPP) over results of the local government elections in Karachi.

He expressed these views while talking to the media here on Tuesday after a hearing of the case in the ECP headquarters in Islamabad.

Speaking on the occasion, Rehman said that all the undeniable evidence of “naked rigging and doctoring the results of the local government polls have already been submitted before the ECP”.

He further said that a large number of returning officers and district returning officers played a very bias role in the polls, but the matter of vote recounting was once again tossed to them. The results of the recounting were as expected, he said.

The ECP has not yet announced schedule for polling in the remaining 11 union councils in Karachi even after almost two months since the local government polls held across the city, the JI leader lamented.

He further said that the JI reserves the right to stage protest and the party will exercise its constitutional and legal right in the face of attempts to deprive the Karachiites of their mandate by the PPP in collaboration with the ECP.

The JI leader vowed that the party would form the local government in Karachi and safeguard each and every vote cast in the favour of the JI.

He maintained that the JI had already won 358 wards, as compared to fewer than 300 wards by the PPP and 214 by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, yet the PPP was adamant to install a Jiyala mayor. The ECP should have decided the cases on merit while defying all pressures a long ago, he said, adding that unfortunately the commission didn’t discharge its duties.