Islamabad: Jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party-backed independents have won three seats in Pakistan's Kyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial assembly. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced first results of the 2024 polls in the early hours of Friday, more than 10 hours after voting ended amid allegations of rigging, sporadic violence and a country mobile phone shutdown. ECP Special Secretary Zafar Iqbal declared the first results at a press conference in Islamabad around 3 am Friday.
Samiullah Khan, an independent backed by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan's PTI, won the PK-76 seat of the Kyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial assembly by securing over 18,000 votes, he said. Independent candidate Fazal Hakeem Khan, also backed by the PTI, took 25,330 votes to win PK-6, he said.
PTI-backed independent candidate Ali Shah has bagged Swat's PK-4 constituency as per initial results from the Election Commission of Pakistan. He secured 30,022 votes. The polls closed Thursday 5 pm and ballot counting began but there was no clear picture till about 3 am Friday from the ECP about which party was leading.
As political parties complained about the delay and questioned the poll authority, the ECP directed all the provincial election commissioners and returning officers to announce the results within half an hour or else face strict action. In a press release issued well past the midnight, the electoral watchdog also said the statements being run by media channels regarding the ECP were not true.
When asked about the delay, Zafar Iqbal told the press conference it was because the Returning Officers were still compiling the results. He also rejected the PTI's claim that the ECP was manipulating the results to "control the victory" of the party. "This is not the case. By Friday morning, results will come to fore," Iqbal said.
Earlier, the Returning Officers had allegedly stopped issuing results to the media following an "apparent victory" of the PTI most seats in Punjab and Kyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) provinces. PTI chairman Barrister Gohar Khan in a statement claimed his party has won over 150 national assembly seats and also is in a position to form governments in Punjab and KPK. He urged the ECP to announce all results without any further delay.
The caretaker government of Pakistan was yet to restore cellphone and mobile internet services in the country which were shut down just before 8 am on Thursday citing security issues on the polling day. PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif, currently the military establishment's favourite, left his party office for home late Thursday night after receiving a report of "shock defeat", a PML-N insider told the Press Trust of India (PTI).