Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) has rejected results of the second phase of the local government elections held in Karachi and Hyderabad on Sunday, and accused the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) of being directly involved in rigging.

Addressing a press conference in Karachi on Monday, PTI leader Ali Zaidi alleged that Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) was being made victorious as part of political engineering. “PPP has been buried with BB [Benazir Bhutto] Shaheed and the current party is a Zardari mafia,” Zaidi added.

Zaidi alleged that the Election Commission failed to conduct a transparent election.

The PTI leader said his party had all the evidences of rigging and manipulation of election results, and that the same would soon be produced before court to challenge the Sindh LG polls.

He claimed that despite rigging PTI won more than 70 seats. “We are all aware of what the deputy commissioners and returning officers (ROs) are doing. We have been saying since the first day that the election commissioner is biased.”

The PTI leader maintained that FIRs were registered against his party MPAs. He said that no one in Karachi was accepting the elections and the results. “Results are being withheld and Our candidates are waiting outside the offices of Returning Officers (ROs).”

A day earlier Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) had also announced to challenge the local body elections in Karachi and Hyderabad, saying that the people had “rejected” the local body election on its call for a boycott.

The MQM-P demanded fresh delimitation saying that the LG polls were not held according to the constitution.

MQM-P had expressed reservation over the delimitations of the constituencies saying that the provincial government had determined the constituencies for the LG polls under Sindh Local Government Act Section 10(1), but the constituencies had a disproportional population.