Jamaat-i-Islami Karachi chief Hafiz Naeemur Rehman has announced that he is forfeiting the Sindh Assembly seat he won after the February 8 elections due to alleged rigging. According to provisional results released by the Election Commission of Pakistan, Naeem had won from the PS-129 constituency (Karachi Central VIII) with 26,296 votes, while the runner-up, Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan’s (MQM-P) Muaz Muqaddam, had 20,296 votes.
This decision comes after the party staged sit-ins at eight different key points in Karachi against the alleged rigging in the polls and claimed that their party’s and independent candidates had secured the majority of votes in Karachi’s national and provincial assemblies constituencies. Hafiz Naeem stated that he does not want to avail the seat as a PTI-backed independent candidate won, according to his team’s calculations, and that his votes were “reduced to 11,000 from 31,000”.
He also alleged that the votes cast for the MQM-P from PS-129 were inflated from 6,000 to 20,000 and called for annulling the election results in Karachi and holding the exercise afresh. He has also demanded that all seats they won be returned to them.