Election tribunal to announce NA-122 rigging verdict today

LAHORE: The election tribunal is expected to announce its verdict regarding alleged rigging in NA-122 this afternoon. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had alleged that Sardar Ayaz Sadiq stole the peoples mandate during the 2013 general elections through pre-planned rigging.

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Sadiq had won the election beating PTI chairman Imran Khan by nearly 9000 votes, and was later elected as Speaker of the National Assembly.

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan had then challenged the election of Sardar Ayaz Sadiq from the NA-122 before the election tribunal.

PTI has maintained before the tribunal that Sadiq had stolen the election through pre-planned rigging and not as a result of negligence on part of the polling staff.

According to a NADRA forensic report – submitted to the election tribunal in May this year – 93,582 votes in NA-122 could not be verified. At the time Imran Khan claimed that he had paid Rs. 2.6 million to verify the votes adding that he will check all 93,000 votes to see if the ID cards match.

Khan claimed that according to his party’s calculations 15,000 of the 73,000 votes which were verified in NA-122 were bogus.