ISLAMABAD: The Muttahidda Qaumi Movement (MQM), a coalition partner of the PPP at the Centre and in Sindh, has demanded fresh polling in nine stations of Gilgit-Baltistan-3 constituency, instead of four polling stations as announced by the election commission.

MQM’s parliamentary leader in National Assembly and Minister for Overseas Pakistanis Dr Farooq Sattar said at a hurriedly-called news conference here on Sunday that his party would boycott the vote if its demand was not met.

He accused the PPP of ‘massively rigging’ the poll.

‘We want re-polling in nine polling stations of the GBLA-3 while the election commission has announced re-polling in only four of them,’ Mr Sattar said.

Similar rigging charges were levelled by MQM’s former ally PML-Q which accused the PPP of ‘breaking all previous records’ of vote fraud.

Addressing a news conference, PML-Q President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain alleged that the PPP had rigged elections in league with the PML-N.

The PML-Q also released a 17-point ‘fact sheet’, on irregularities and rigging.

The MQM leader asked President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani to take notice of the allegations leveled by various political parties to restore confidence of the people of Gilgit-Baltistan in the newly-announced system.

Mr Sattar was of the view that the system introduced by the government in Gilgit-Baltistan had become a ‘democracy-deficit system’.

He alleged that state machinery had been used by the PPP during the election and results were manipulated in some constituencies. However, he alleged irregularities in only three constituencies of Gilgit district and alleged that results had been changed at the last moment in Gilgit’s GBLA-3 constituency and MQM’s Hadi Hussain had been deprived of the seat.

By announcing re-polling in four polling stations, the MQM leader said, the election commission had admitted that rigging and irregularities had taken place in the constituency.

He urged the election commission to take action against people who were responsible for the fraud. He asked the election commission to disqualify the candidate who, he alleged, had ordered the snatching of ballot boxes from polling stations. Dr Sattar said his party did not make any electoral adjustment with any party prior to polling.

‘The PML-Q contacted us for a seat adjustment, but it was too late,’ he said. When asked if the MQM would become a partner in the new government in Gilgit-Baltistan, he said:

‘It is too early to say anything in this regard. The government first needs to clean the political atmosphere in the area.’

Chaudhry Shujaat termed his party’s performance in the GB polls satisfactory. He, however, made it clear that the post-vote scenario was not good in the area and the government needed to take some steps to normalise the situation.

He said his party believed that GB was as important as the AJK and, therefore, its government should reflect a national consensus and no party should try to grab absolute power. He claimed that not a single leader of his party was among beneficiaries of the NRO