By Staff Reporter
GILGIT: Gilgit-Baltistan Election Commission has ordered the suspension of final election results across all constituencies until re-polling is conducted at 26 polling stations spread across five seats, throwing the outcome of Saturday’s regional assembly vote into uncertainty even as the Pakistan Peoples Party held a commanding lead.
In a circular dated June 8 and addressed to returning officers in the affected constituencies, the commission said results could not be consolidated until votes from the re-polled stations were incorporated into the final count. The directive covered constituencies Skardu-II (GBA-8), Astore-I (GBA-13), Diamer-I (GBA-15), Diamer-II (GBA-16) and Diamer-III (GBA-17).
The commission told returning officers not to “open, scrutinise or count the postal ballots and not to finalise, consolidate, announce or issue the final result” of their respective constituencies until the re-polling was complete.
GB Chief Election Commissioner Raja Shahbaz Khan said re-polling would take place on June 15 at 10 stations in Skardu-II, one each in Astore-I and Diamer-I, three in Diamer-II and 11 in Diamer-III. He said constituency-level Form-47 result sheets had been finalised but would not be issued until voting in the affected stations had concluded.
The election body separately ordered recounts in two additional constituencies — Ghizer-II (GBA-20) and Gilgit-III (GBA-3). The Ghizer-II recount was sought by both independent candidate Safdar Ali Shirazi and PPP candidate Nazir Ahmed Advocate, who alleged irregularities in the counting process.
The decisions came amid a chorus of complaints from multiple political parties. The PPP, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl all raised concerns about delays in announcing results, irregularities in the issuance of Form-45 polling station result slips, and alleged attempts to manipulate outcomes as preliminary tallies emerged.
The authorities stopped short of annulling results for entire seats, opting instead for targeted re-polling at specific stations.
Coalition arithmetic
Despite the suspensions, the broad outlines of the election outcome appeared to be taking shape. Unofficial results showed the PPP winning 10 to 11 of the assembly’s 24 seats, making it the single largest party in the Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz secured four seats, while independent candidates collectively took seven, and the Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen claimed one.
With no party close to the 13-seat threshold needed for an outright majority, sources said a PPP-PML-N coalition was the most likely outcome. They said the arrangement could mirror the formula used at the federal level by the former Pakistan Democratic Movement alliance, with the PPP likely to take the chief minister’s office and the PML-N the governor’s post, with ministerial portfolios divided on a roughly 60-40 basis.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose PML-N governs at the federal level in coalition with the PPP, congratulated the people of Gilgit-Baltistan on the peaceful conduct of the election, and felicitated the PPP on emerging as the largest party.
Gilgit-Baltistan, a mountainous territory bordering China and Afghanistan, is administered by Islamabad and does not have the constitutional status of a full province, though its assembly elections are closely watched as a gauge of political sentiment nationally.
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