ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) claimed that pre-poll rigging is continuing by manipulating population figures backward through the officials of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
The PPP urged the caretaker government to immediately release population and household figures of all population blocks in the country.
PPP Central Election Cell in-charge Senator Taj Haider said, “Systematic pre-poll rigging continues unabated and with impunity by manipulating population figures backward through the officials of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics”.
Taj Haider in a statement on Saturday claimed that in the first phase of pre-poll rigging large chunks of the population in PPP strongholds were not counted at all thus, drastically reducing the overall population of at least three provinces. In the second phase, the dates of counting were selectively extended giving clear advantage to those who have always remained against the Pakistan People’s Party, he accused.
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Senator Haider said that the so-called “digital counting” was closed on midnight of 22nd May and the online population and household count figures were obtained by Sindh and other provinces through screenshots. He said that later started the pre-poll rigging third phase of cutting these figures down when reduced figures of population and households were given in envelopes to the participants of the “CCI” meeting.
“In response to protests on reduction in population and household numbers from all corners, the “CCI” meeting was told that this had been done in order not to alter the existing number of National Assembly seats in provinces and to avoid the needed constitutional amendment in Article 51 (3), which was not possible in the present situation.”
He said in the present phase of pre-poll rigging, block populations and household figures have not been made public. He demanded immediate release of population and household figures of all population blocks in the country.
He said: “If the number of NA seats allotted to provinces remained unchanged then fresh delimitation was not required under the Constitutional provisions. Appeals against delimitations, if any, could be heard by the Election Commission of Pakistan under the Election Act.
As such ECP could easily hold the next general elections within the constitutionally mandated time frame, especially when the ECP had been provided an extra 30 days through dissolution of assemblies a few days ahead of the mandated time.”
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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