By Staff Reporter
MUZAFFARABAD: Pakistan’s ruling party appeared on course for a majority in Azad Kashmir’s regional assembly this week, even as some of the most fiercely contested seats had yet to go to the polls and allegations of vote-rigging plunged one district into fresh turmoil.
The Pakistan Muslim League (N) had secured 25 of the 53 seats in the Azad Kashmir Legislative Assembly as of Wednesday, according to results collated so far, with analysts predicting the party would pick up further constituencies once the remaining rounds of voting are completed, as well as a share of the assembly’s reserved seats.
The elections, which were meant to unfold across three phases between late July and 10 August, have been thrown into disarray by security concerns and disputes over the conduct of polling. Voting in seven constituencies was postponed on Monday, with no new date yet fixed, while separate irregularities have forced a rerun in 23 polling stations across two constituencies, due to take place on Saturday.
The vote has unfolded against a backdrop of violence that has closed roads and prompted the authorities to suspend internet access across parts of the region.
A government born into crisis
Analysts warned that the unrest is likely to overshadow the formation of Azad Kashmir’s next government from the outset.
Central to the tension are the assembly’s 12 seats reserved for what the region’s constitution designates as refugees from Indian-administered Kashmir — seats largely won by the PML-N and which have become one of the most contentious issues in Pakistani politics in recent months. Protesters in Kashmir argue the seats are too often filled by people who live elsewhere in Pakistan and have little stake in, or understanding of, the region’s economic hardship. The PML-N did not respond to a request for comment on the criticism.
The scale of the unrest became clear after the first phase of voting in late July, when the Joint Awami Action Committee, a protest group, said more than 30 people had been killed in clashes with security forces around the town of Rawalakot within the space of two days. Pakistani authorities rejected that figure and described the protesters as militants backed by India. The death toll has not been independently verified.
Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a political analyst, said the incoming administration would be burdened by the combined weight of electoral, political, economic and security grievances, and warned it was poorly placed to defuse the anger given that the PML-N’s likely victory rests substantially on the very refugee seats protesters want scrapped. The region, he said, “will remain at boiling point.”
A fractured field
The political backdrop to the unrest is itself unusually strained. Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, which won the last Azad Kashmir election in 2021, opted to boycott this year’s contest over concerns about electoral fraud, leaving the field to the PML-N and its national coalition partner, the Pakistan Peoples Party, competing against one another instead.
The PPP has secured 12 seats so far — fewer than the party had anticipated, a shortfall its leaders have attributed to rigging by the PML-N. The PML-N has dismissed the accusation. Raja Shakeel, a local election commission official, told Reuters there had been no major irregularities in the process.
Analysts believe the most consequential contests are still to come, with voters in the protest strongholds of Rawalakot and Sudhnoti yet to cast their ballots.
Haveli dispute triggers strike call
The sharpest flashpoint so far emerged on Wednesday in the Haveli constituency of LA-17, after the returning officer issued Form 27 declaring the sitting Azad Kashmir prime minister, the PPP’s Faisal Mumtaz Rathore, the winner — despite his PML-N rival, Engineer Mohsin Aziz, having reportedly been given assurances that the form would be withheld until the Election Commission had considered his complaint.
The move has inflamed tensions in Haveli district, where PML-N supporters have called a complete shutter-down strike and open-ended protest from Thursday. At a gathering in Forward Kahuta chaired by the party’s district president, Syed Abid Bukhari, participants demanded that the Election Commission open all polling bags from the constituency, order a recount, and settle the result according to the original figures recorded by presiding officers — warning that the protest would widen if their demands went unmet.
Polling in LA-17 on Monday had already been contested by all three main candidates — Rathore, Aziz and independent Khawaja Tariq Saeed — each alleging rigging by their rivals. That evening, thousands of Aziz’s supporters gathered outside the district courts, insisting that the Form 24 results issued to polling agents at individual stations had shown their candidate ahead of Rathore by more than 8,000 votes, and accusing the returning officer of preparing a different result in the prime minister’s favour. Some protesters were reported injured during the demonstration.
The unrest eased on Tuesday after Aziz said the returning officer had given him a written undertaking that Form 27 would not be issued until the Muzaffarabad-based Election Commission had ruled on his complaint. The Commission’s chief, Justice (retd) Ghulam Mustafa Mughal, had told Dawn on Tuesday that a decision would follow once the polling material reached his office, and is understood to have given Aziz a similar assurance by phone.
The district returning officer, Waheed Mughal, and the returning officer, Asheer Chughtai — both members of the subordinate judiciary — were evacuated from their offices in Forward Kahuta along with the polling bags, with the assistance of the army’s Quick Response Force, and reached Muzaffarabad by midnight.
Despite this, the returning officer issued Form 27 after midnight, dated 11 August, declaring Rathore the winner with 33,872 votes against Aziz’s 32,354. Saeed received 12,538 votes, while Amir Nazir Chaudhry of the Istehkam-e-Pakistan Party polled 5,405.
Rathore announced the result on X hours later, describing his “remarkable victory” as officially notified and thanking PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Faryal Talpur for their support.
The declaration has not settled the matter. In a video message from Muzaffarabad, Aziz repeated his claim that the Form 24 results distributed to polling agents representing all nine candidates were genuine, and that different figures were subsequently used by the returning officer. He offered a compromise: opening just two of the disputed polling bags, from areas where he alleges the results were altered, saying he would apologise to Rathore and concede if his allegation proved unfounded. “If Faisal Rathore has won, why is he afraid of opening of polling bags and a subsequent recount?” he asked.
Aziz further argued that the Elections Act 2020 obliges returning officers to open polling bags once a candidate lodges a complaint, claiming that when his team raised the point with Chughtai, the officer said he was unaware of the provision and did not have a copy of the legislation to hand.
On Wednesday, two senior lawyers, Raja Sajjad Ahmed and Chaudhry Ghulam Nabi, submitted a formal application to the chief election commissioner seeking a recount in LA-17 over the alleged tampering. The Commission said it would take up the matter at 10am on Thursday.
Tariq Fazal Chaudhry, a PML-N leader and federal minister for parliamentary affairs, called on X for a transparent inquiry into Aziz’s rigging complaint, saying he hoped the Commission would examine the Haveli allegations on their merits. Aziz, for his part, said he held out little hope for the Commission after what he called its failure to prevent the “unlawful” issuing of Form 27. “I will take my case to the people’s court apart from the superior judiciary,” he said.
Saeed has also alleged tampering and called for a recount, claiming that votes he won at nine polling stations were omitted from his tally and credited to Rathore instead.
PPP condemns “rigged and violent” polls
The PPP has separately levelled broad criticism at the conduct of the wider election. At a high-level meeting in Islamabad, chaired by Faryal Talpur, the party’s Women’s Wing president and its point person on Azad Kashmir affairs, the polls were described as “rigged and violent,” with particular concern raised over the performance of the Azad Kashmir Election Commission.
The meeting also criticised the staggered, phase-by-phase structure of the elections and called for polling to be completed immediately in the two outstanding districts of the third phase, along with the seven remaining constituencies in Poonch, so the assembly can be fully formed. Participants pointed to the suspension of internet services, shortages of polling material and staff at some stations, and what they characterised as inadequate security arrangements.
Talpur said the PPP remained the authentic representative of Azad Kashmir’s people and continued to command strong public backing despite the difficult circumstances.
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