ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) vice-chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Thursday raised objections over the fresh delimitation of constituencies done by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). Speaking at a presser, he said that there is no constitutional or legal justification for the new delimitations.

Fresh delimitations were conducted for personal gains, he said, adding everyone knows who will benefit from the fresh delimitation. Qureshi also said that the ECP has lost its creditability, adding if the top electoral watchdog failed to hold free, fair and transparent elections, a new political crisis will be created in the country.

Citing an example, he said that the ECP declared a PTI member Sindh Assembly dead in the new delimitations. “The MPA received a message from the ECP, in which he was declared dead and his name was removed from the voters’ list…so how can we accept the new delimitation,” he questioned.

The former foreign minister noted that the international rating agency, Moody’s downgraded the outlook on Pakistan’s rating to negative from stable. “The country is on the verge of bankruptcy due to the incompetence and the flawed economic policies of the imported regime of Shehbaz Sharif,” he lamented.

Qureshi reiterated the party’s demand for an immediate election, saying that the ECP should hold free, fair, and transparent elections as soon as possible to steer the country out of the prevailing crisis. “The ECP should be neutral or else people will start raising questions about its neutrality…we’ve already made it clear that the chief election commissioner is acting as a close aid of the PML-N,” he added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022