No rigging was carried out in polling for national and provincial assemblies constituencies and allegations levelled by some loser candidates against Election Commission are untrue and baseless. This was stated by Provincial Election Commissioner Balochistan Syed Sultan Bayazeed while addressing a press conference at his officer here on Sunday evening.
He said: "It remained a bad trend always that loser candidates used to level accusations against the election commission and other authorities of rigging in polling; however, all these allegations are untrue and baseless."
He told three major causes of delay in announcement of unofficial results of some constituencies in Balochistan those include power load shedding, fault in Result Management System Software and night stay of polling staff at polling stations. "We made our best to provide power generators to all returning officers but due to closure of markets, we could not purchase them and because of power outages, result preparation became late," he said adding that another factor was that WAPDA did not fulfil its promise of not carrying out load shedding during elections days.
In reply to a question, he said that polling staff had received threats by banned militant organizations that they would be revenged for performing duty at polling stations after the law enforcement personnel escorting them return back to their barracks adding that due to which, some polling staff hided and did not attend their duties.
He, however, warned that Election Commission would recommend departmental action against the government employees who denied performing election duty. He said that so far, one unofficial result of National Assembly constituency and six results of provincial assembly constituencies have been dispatched to ECP Islamabad adding that EC Balochistan was making efforts to compile and finalise unofficial results of all remaining constituencies in Balochistan till Monday noon.
He said that he admitted that polling staff was not properly trained to use RMS Computer System of result making that caused delay in timely announcement of polling results.
He said there was 63 percent turnout in Quetta and Pashtoon belt areas and 25 percent in Baloch areas. He said there no law exists to stop a candidate becoming member assembly who won the elections from a constituency where total turnout of all polling stations was two percent or five percent.
He appreciated Pak Army whose military helicopters helped in shifting of ballot papers to far flung areas. He refused allegations that ballot papers were leaked out before the polling.
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