QUETTA

Calling a province-wide protest against alleged rigging in polls for Wednesday (tomorrow), the Balochistan National Party-Mengal complained on Monday it was being deliberately pushed to the wall and ripped off its seats.
“Huge rigging was made in vote count, and results were being delayed in a number of constituencies to rip BNP-M off seats by declaring its candidates unsuccessful,” Dr Jahanzaib Jamaldini, BNP-M senior vice-president, told a news conference at Quetta Press Club.
Hundreds of BNP-M activists and leaders had been protesting against vote-rigging in elections by staging a sit-in outside the press club and at gardens of Quetta metropolitan.
Jamaldini told the media they had expressed reservations about skewing of the ballot beforehand to the election commissioner, caretaker chief minister and other authorities, but no step was taken. “Instead, different areas of Quetta were raided by security personnel before polls, and BNP-M activists were arrested and terrorised,” he went on to say.
The BNP-M leader alleged results for the constituencies of PB-4, PB-5 and PB-6 were manipulated in such a dramatic manner that winning candidates of his party lost to candidates of another group.
Surprisingly, he said, some other party candidate who did not even bag a single vote from Nushki and Chagai districts was declared winner in NA-260 Quetta-cum-Chagai.
The same elements, he alleged, wanted to skew the ballot in the stronghold of Sardar Akhtar Mengal, but due to a wide margin, they could not succeed in their designs.
Jamaldini said Balochistan National Party-Mengal was a democratic party, but “it is being pushed to the wall”. He complained that his party was only included in the electoral process to rip it off its seats.
He expressed annoyance that the media was completely ignoring, particularly the BNP-M, which had been protesting against vote-rigging. He said although televisions and newspapers did get advertisements from revenues of Balochistan, the media was keeping mum over the issue of the province.
The BNP-N leader meanwhile announced a province-wide protest on May 15 against alleged rigging in polls, and said the party’s future course of action would be announced shortly.