KARACHI: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) bagged the majority votes by securing 93 seats in union council elections, according to official results released on Monday.
Local government elections were held in Karachi on Sunday to elect members of local councils who will then elect the mayor of Karachi. The fact that no one party got majority votes in the election will complicate the mayoral race.
According to official results of 235 seats released by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), the PPP has won 93 UCs, followed by the JI, which took 86 seats, and former premier Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, which bagged 40 seats.
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif won seven seats, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazal (JUIF) got three, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan got two and the Muhajir Qaumi Movement got one seat while independent candidates bagged three union committees. Polling on 11 seats was postponed due to the death of the candidate.
The delay in the release of results prompted rigging allegations from the opposition JI, PTI and JUI-F political parties in the southern Sindh province.
But Ejaz Anwar Chauhan, the provincial election commissioner, attributed the delay in results to the completion of the voting process at several polling stations well past 7pm on Sunday evening. He also said the results were being manually compiled and the Results Transmission System was not used.
“It takes time to compile the results,” he said.
Murtaza Wahab, a spokesperson for the Sindh government and a senior Pakistan Peoples Party leader, urged the election body to ensure that results were issued on time.
ECP Deputy Director Sajjad Khattak also directed the district returning officers (DROs) to address the concerns of political parties.
