Shehbaz demands action against govt after Daska by-poll report

Opposition Leader in the National Assembly and President of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) said on Sunday that the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) report on Daska by-poll has revealed how PTI-government attempted to steal the public mandate.

“It is a slap in the face of cabinet ministers who raised a storm. The nation now awaits how the govt bigwigs are made to answer for their role in rigging,” the PML-N president said in a tweet.

Earlier, former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said that Prime Minister Imran Khan and Chief Minister Punjab Usman Buzdar should be held responsible for rigging in Daska by-poll elections, Aaj News reported.

Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, the senior PML-N leader said that the disappearance of presiding officers during the vote count for the NA-75 Daska by-elections on February 19 could not be done without the consent of the CM Punjab and Prime Minister Imran Khan.

"If our judiciary can send a sitting Prime Minister home for not withdrawing a salary, it can also take a suo motu under Article 6 of the Constitution against the government for stealing an election," he said, hoping that the judiciary will make an example out of this case.

QWP chief says govt should stop harassing ECP to work freely

His remarks came after the ECP's report held the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government in Punjab responsible for alleged rigging in Daska by-polls in February.

The report released on Friday stated that election officials, police, and the local administration failed to play their “designated role in a requisite manner and were found [to be] puppets in the hands of their unlawful masters” during the by-election in Daska.

The PML-N leader said only time will reveal that who had influenced police, ECP officials and the local administration to swing the by-poll results in favour of the incumbent government.

Abbasi, who served as the 21st premier of the country between August 2017 and March 2018, claimed that the on-duty returning officers were strictly asked not to interfere in whatever the police and the local administration do with the ballots.

He alleged the police and the administration were asked to keep the voters’ turnout below 25 per cent, "thus the government machinery did everything they could to slow down the voting process."

Abbasi said that the ECP’s report included the names of every official involved in the pre-planned rigging and demanded that the report be made public.