Outrightly rejecting all claims and evidences to the contrary that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Revenue Minister Ali Ameen Gandapur committed electoral fraud at a DI Khan polling station, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan said the minister went there to “prevent” rigging and is being politically victimised.
The minister is accused of barging into the polling station on May 31 with his guards, manhandling staff and policemen and forcibly taking away ballot boxes. The Cantt SHO registered an FIR against him and Gandapur was taken into custody on Monday after he reportedly “handed himself to the police”.
He was presented in court and sent on a one-day remand. Subsequently, on Wednesday, Gandapur was granted bail for the two separate cases registered against him.
Addressing the media in Islamabad earlier today, Imran urged political parties to come forward to have a “re-election” if they believed rigging took place in the recent by-elections.
“I am telling the opposition to come and have a re-match, but I think they are afraid,” he said.
He assured that his party were open to a re-run of the elections and said that “they should come forward and together we can go to the Election Commission of Pakistan.”
“If they still think elections were not conducted properly, let’s do it again. Let’s do it division by division and under Army supervision,” he concluded.
The statement comes two days after MPA and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Revenue Minister Ali Amin Gandapur was released on bail following a one-day remand for allegedly forcibly taking away ballot boxes from a polling station on Sunday.
According to the DI Khan police, vote count was under way in Hemath Adda polling station in the morning when the lawmaker, accompanied by his brother Umar Amin Gandapur, a candidate for tehsil nazim, and his armed supporters arrived, picked up the ballot boxes and began putting them in the minister’s car.
Also read: ANP’s Asfandyar lambasts IK: Demands dissolution of the KPK govt.
