PPP Candidate Emerges Victorious in Azad Jammu and Kashmir’s LA-15 By-Election

• PML-N’s Hina Pervaiz Butt accuses PPP of rigging by-election.
• By-election takes place in Azad Jammu and Kashmir’s LA-15.
• PPP’s Qamar is in the lead with 25,755 votes, leaving behind PML-N.

In the unofficial results of the by-election held in Azad Jammu and Kashmir’s (AJK) LA-15 constituency, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) candidate Sardar Ziaul Qamar has emerged as the winner, according to reports from The News.

PPP Candidate Emerges Victorious in Azad Jammu and Kashmir’s LA-15 By-Election

The PPP and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), who are political allies at the national level, were among several parties competing for the vacant seat following the disqualification of Ilyas over contempt charges.

After the counting of votes from 189 polling stations, Qamar is leading with 25,755 votes, while PML-N’s Mushtaq Minhas has secured 20,485 votes so far.

The seat became vacant after the AJK High Court disqualified former AJK Prime Minister Sardar Tanvir Ilyas, who had won the 2018 election with 20,010 votes.

Eighteen candidates participated in the election, including PTI’s colonel (retd) Zamir and others.

The total number of registered voters in the constituency is 101,145, with 53,107 male voters and 48,038 female voters.

PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari congratulated PPP candidate Qamar on winning the by-election in LA-15, Bagh, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and defeating former minister and PML-N candidate Minhas. Zardari expressed gratitude to the people of AJK for placing their trust in the PPP.

PML-N alleges rigging In response, PML-N lawmaker Hina Pervaiz Butt accused the PPP of rigging in the by-election following the disqualification of former AJK Prime Minister Tanveer Ilyas by the high court in April.

Butt shared a video on Twitter, claiming that PPP members were caught red-handed rigging the election. In the video, a man alleges that ballot papers were stamped by an unidentified person to manipulate the results.

Another PML-N leader, Attaullah Tarar, claimed that their party’s candidate had a clear lead in the by-election, despite reports of rigging. He tweeted that it was improbable for some polling stations to have completed 80-90 percent of the polling while others had only reached 30-39 percent.

PPP’s Faisal Karim Kundi congratulated his party on Twitter, stating that unofficially, PPP’s Ziaul Qamar was winning by a significant margin in the Bagh, Kashmir by-election.

The official results of the by-election in AJK’s Bagh-II constituency are yet to be released.