LAHORE  -  Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Marriyum Aurangzeb said Friday that some people were presenting fake form 45, taken from the social media, and making unwar­ranted hue and cry over the issue.

Addressing a press conference along with another party leader At­taullah Tarar at the PML-N Secre­tariat here, she recalled that the Paki­stan Muslim League-N mandate was stolen in 2018 by halting the Results Transmission System (RTS). She re­gretted that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf was spreading form 45 on the social media but not presenting those in the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), as those were fake forms. 

She said the PTI had completely been exposed after the results of gen­eral election 2024, as it was unable to present original form 45, and only sharing private television channels’ screen shots.

The former information minister said, “Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman is respectable for us, but I don’t see the chances of the JUI-F [Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl] alliance with the PTI.” She said the PML-N was also preparing a white paper on elections and it would soon make it public. 

PML-N leader Attaullah Tarar alleged that the PTI was trying to derail democracy by making elections controver­sial. The form 45 of the PTI reached the media and social media but could not reach the Election Commission of Paki­stan, he added. He said nobody would be allowed to weaken democracy by using negative tactics.

PML-N Central Secretary In­formation Marriyum Aurang­zeb further said that PTI was trying to discredit the 2024 general elections through an organised narrative based on lies and forged form-45s which is why they are present­ing news media screenshots to the election commission in­stead of their fake evidence. Marriyum said that it seems as if PTI was geared up to com­plete its unfinished agenda of May 9th to destabilise Paki­stan beyond repair. She point­ed out that PTI leaders in KPK had stated that they will ‘make KPK Dhaka’. This, she said, was consistent with the statements of their leader in the past who had said that he would chop Pakistan into pieces. 

She said candidates started feeding fake and forged form-45s to the news media from the get go at 6:00 pm on elec­tion night. At that point of time the forms were in the process of being formulated and com­piled and were not even giv­en to the polling agents or the candidates, she added. After the news media started airing partial and unofficial results based on these fake form-45s, a false narrative of an overwhelming victory of PTI-backed independents was pro­jected on the news media. 

She said the PML-N contact­ed its candidates and their election staff at that time and it was confirmed by that the results were still in the pro­cess of being compiled. The form-45s being shared by the PTI were either unstamped, unsigned, or forged. That is why when PTI approached the election commission with their rigging allegations they presented screen shots of re­sults given by the news chan­nels instead of the form-45s they claimed they have. This she said was PTI’s signature behavior where they launch a media propaganda campaign instead of approaching the le­gal and relevant institutions to peddle their false narrative be­cause there is no truth to their claims, not do they have any evidence to back their false accusations. The same play­book was employed in 2014 after the elections and during PMLN’s tenure in government where fake documents were waved in press conferences but were dishonorably dis­missed in the court of law.

The former Federal Minister Information and Broadcast­ing slammed PTI’s hypocrisy of asking the US and the EU to intervene in Pakistan’s inter­nal matter of general elections after running an entire cam­paign against US and EU inter­vention in Pakistan’s internal affairs. 

“The PTI of ‘Absolutely No’ to the US, has suddenly trans­formed to ‘Absolutely Yes!’ to western intervention”, she said.

Why PTI was presenting their fake proof in front of In­ternational media. When there are appropriate legal forums. They should have gone to the election commission, to the election tribunals and the courts if they would not be sat­isfied? She questioned. The reason for this was that they know that their forged form-45s would not hold any value at legal forums, she said. Virtu­ally all international pre-poll surveys showed PMLN as the front runner in the 2024 elec­tions, so they know very well where the majority vote of the people was cast, she added.

Marriyum pointed out the double standards of PTI say­ing that they believe that all the constituencies where they won were transparent elec­tions while rigging was to blame wherever they lost. Why the elections in KPK were not rigged if this election was to be marred by rigging, she said. The real form-45 were the ones uploaded on the Election com­mission website, she argued.

Speaking at the press con­ference, Ataullah Tarrar said hundreds of fake form-45 were uploaded on social me­dia which was nothing less than ‘digital terrorism’ against the stability of the country. He showed the fake form-45s to the press and how PTI forged them. He also pointed out in­stances where two form-45s of the same polling station were created by the PTI. He said that Pakistan needs to transition towards democratic consolidation instead of creat­ing chaos and anarchy through rogging allegations. 

Tarrar questioned PTI that why wasn’t there any rig­ging allegations in KPK, just because they won there? “Would Rana Sanaullah, Khu­rram Dastgir, Rana Sanaul­lah and Javed Latif have lost the elections if there was rig­ging?. Wouldn’t they have won through rigging if that was the case? Just because you lost, you have started alleging rig­ging”, he said.

He said it was not possible that media houses had cor­respondents at every polling station. Therefore the media houses relied on candidates for this information which the PTI exploited and shared fake information to create a false narrative. He said that he was also asked by media houses but he did not share any info until he did not have form-45s authenticated by the election commission.

The PMLN Deputy Gener­al Secretary said that PTI did not object when the Presid­ing Officers submitted form-45s to the ROs, because they know that they had upload­ed fake forms on social media and they had no grounds to object. He also showed proof of conflicting results aired by the media.

Marriyum and Tarrar warned against dragging the coun­try into instability through such tactics just for political gains and said that PTI should take these matters to the rele­vant forums instead of casting doubt over the electoral pro­cess.