The PML-N has secured a simple majority to form the government in Azad Jammu and Kashmir after winning 23 of the 45 directly elected seats, according to Prime Minister’s Adviser on Political Affairs Rana Sanaullah (Geo News).
PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, whose party has repeatedly alleged that the polls were rigged, answered with a warning to the party his own is in coalition with at the centre.
“To my friends in the PML-N, can you hear that sound? The countdown for the federal government has begun,” he said in a video message.
Describing the polls as “neither free nor fair”, Bilawal alleged they were “rigged elections”, “bullet elections”, “murderous elections” and “bloody elections” — language that reflects the violence around Sunday’s polling, in which the PPP says party worker Mushtaq Shah was killed in LA-31 and its leaders assaulted, claims the PML-N rejects.
He nonetheless congratulated party workers, putting the PPP’s own total at nine seats. “You have won nine seats for the Pakistan Peoples Party despite all this,” he said — a figure consistent with four in Mirpur and five in the second phase.
Bilawal announced a public gathering in Bagh district and urged supporters in Poonch to prepare for a rally on August 10 — the day the division votes in the third and final phase. “Poonch, I am coming. Get ready,” he said.
The cumulative total also settles a figure that moved through Monday. Reported counts for the second phase ranged between 13 and 14 seats; a running total of 23 across both completed phases, against the nine the PML-N took in Mirpur on July 27, implies 14 in the second.
The PML-N-led federal government is backed by several parties, with the PPP its principal ally. That is what gives the dispute its weight: a quarrel over a territorial assembly is being conducted between the two parties whose arrangement sustains the government in Islamabad.
The figures are Sanaullah’s and remain unofficial pending consolidation by the Election Commission. The PPP’s rigging allegations have not been established before any tribunal, and the PML-N rejects them.
Poonch division votes on August 10 for the remaining seats in a 53-member assembly.
