ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Prime Minister Imran Khan has once again highlighted the issues faced in elections, and underlined the need to use Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in polls to rectify the issues.
In a Tweet on Wednesday, the prime minister pointed out a major flaw occurred in the recently held first phase of local government elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
In the KPK polls held on December 19, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl’s (JUI-F) Candidate Zubair Ali had won the seat for the coveted post of Peshawar Mayor against Rizwan Bangash of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
Zubair Ali had won the Peshawar Mayor election with a margin of 12,087 votes as he had bagged 63,610 votes while Rizwan Bangash’s votes were 51,523.
Interestingly, a hefty number of votes – 23,113 – polled for the seat had been rejected.
LG elections in KP have again shown problem of rejected votes bec of double stamping etc. The same had come out in Judicial Commission report on 2013 elections. The ability to manipulate elections through getting opp votes rejected is one of the reasons the status quo opposes EVM pic.twitter.com/ch78zPEGQw
— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) February 16, 2022
“LG elections in KP have again shown problem of rejected votes because of double stamping etc,” the prime minister wrote on Twitter alluding the above mentioned rejection of votes which were greater in number than the winning margin.
The prime minister said that the same had come out in the Judicial Commission report on 2013 general elections.
Imran Khan said that the ability to manipulate elections through getting opposition’s votes rejected is one of the reasons, the status quo opposes the EVM.
