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PTI MPAs Fauzia Bibi, Meraj Humayun spurn vote-selling allegations

By Bureau report
April 20, 2018

PESHAWAR: Two female lawmakers of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) have rejected the claim made by the party Chairman Imran Khan that they sold their votes in the Senate election.

Speaking at separate news conferences at the Peshawar Press Club on Thursday, they insisted that they had voted as per the party policy.

Both denied the charges levelled against them by the party leadership and claimed that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak had saved some of his blue-eyed boys in the “vote-selling bargain” during the Senate election in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly.

“Chief Minister Pervez Khattak and some provincial ministers knew the actual situation, but misguided the party’s central leadership about the sale of votes,” argued Fauzia Bibi under oath.

Hailing from Chitral, she was elected on the women’s reserved seat.

She maintained that she had voted for PTI candidate Ayub Afridi who got 10 first priority votes. “The party had put the blame on eight members for not casting their votes for Ayub Afridi,” she added.

“I request Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan to open the ballot boxes and located the vote with my signatures to find out the truth. The vote-selling allegations had not only damaged my political career but also earned dishonour to my family and people in Chitral,” she lamented. She asked the party leadership to investigate the matter through the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

The PTI MPA said the party leadership and concerned committee should have first talked to the MPAs for their alleged involvement in the vote-selling and then issued them show-cause notices if they were not satisfied with their explanation.

Meraj Humayun Khan, who belongs to Swabi and had recently quit the Qaumi Watan Party (QWP) to join PTI, also vehemently denied having sold her vote and said the party leadership should have talked to her before making her name public. “I cast my votes as per directives of Chief Minister Pervez Khattak in the Senate election,” she said. She pointed out that she had formally joined the PTI after the Senate election.