ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has ordered authorities to withhold the notification of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Senator Saeed Ghani’s victory on Sindh Assembly seat, PS-114, in Karachi’s Mehmoodabad area.
The ECP issued the orders a day after Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) challenged before the commission the victory of Saeed Ghani in the July 9 by-election.
After an initial hearing of the case, the ECP adjourned the hearing till July 17 and issued notice to Saeed Ghani to appear before the commission.
Advocate Iqbal Qadri, who is also a member of the National Assembly belonging to the MQM from Karachi, filed an application in the ECP headquarters in Islamabad on behalf of Kamran Khan Tessori, the MQM candidate in the PS-114 constituency.
Through the petition, MQM has demanded vote recount and verification of thumb impressions of all the votes cast in the constituency. MQM has requested the ECP to hold announcement of results till the verification process is complete.
MQM claims that it was leading in the polling; however, the results were modified in last minutes and the party was forcefully defeated.
According to unconfirmed and unofficial results, the PPP candidate secured 23,840 votes against his closest rival Kamran Tessori of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, who got 18,106 votes.
Pakistan Muslim League-N’s Ali Akbar Gujjar became third as he got 5,353 votes; followed by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Engineer Najeeb Haroon (5,098 votes) and Jamaati Islami’s Zahoor Jadoon bagged 1,661 votes.
MQM-P Chief Farooq Sattar, while talking to media outside ECP, demanded biometric verification of all votes casted during by-poll. “MQM-P’s candidate was securing victory till the very last moment. Startlingly, he lost in the end,” added Sattar.
