The provisional results of 65 tehsil council seats were announced by the returning officers, according to which the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has emerged largest political party with 32 seats.
Jamaat-e-Islami, which had suffered a setback in the general elections of 2018 in one of its strongholds of Lower Dir, appeared to be gaining lost ground, as its candidates, according to initial results, emerged victorious in at least two out of seven tehsil councils. The final and official results of local bodies’ elections will be issued by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) later.
Meanwhile, in their separate felicitation messages, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Shah Farman and Chief Minister Mahmood Khan congratulated the PTI candidates and party workers over their success. The governor said that for the first time, the local government elections were held in tribal districts and the tribal people actively participated. The chief minister said the result of the LG elections showed the confidence of people in the policies of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Imran Khan also congratulated his party for “overwhelming success” in the second phase of local government elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, saying the “people of KP have emphatically rejected the traitors who sold out to foreign masters”.
In his tweet, the premier termed his party’s visible success as an “early warning to all traitors”, saying “this is what awaits them in their constituencies”. Planning Minister Asad Umar also tweeted that the PTI’s “landslide victory” in the KP elections proved that the nation stood by its leader.
“Now the real decision will not be made through the no-confidence motion. The question is whether Pakistan’s future will be decided by its people or a few sold-out politicians and their foreign masters,” he said.
According to unofficial results, the PTI secured victory in six out of seven tehsil councils of Swat. One seat was bagged by a JUI-F candidate.
Likewise, PTI is leading in all three councils of Chitral and Malakand, as per the unofficial results. In the Shangla district, PTI won in three councils out of four while one seat was secured by ANP. Abdullah Khan, the brother of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Mahmood Khan, also won a seat in his ancestral Matta tehsil.
According to the ECP, elections for mayor and chairman slots were held in 65 city and tehsil councils as well as for various seats of 1,830 village and neighbourhood councils.
A total of 28,020 candidates were in the run, of which 651 contested for the seats of city and tehsil council mayor and chairman. Besides, 12,980 candidates were vying for the general seats of village and neighbourhood councils, 2,668 for reserved seats for women, 6,451 for peasants, 5,213 for youth and 57 for minority seats.
Meanwhile, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Farrukh Habib said that the PTI, under the leadership of Prime Minister Imran Khan, swept the local government elections with the vote of the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
In a tweet, he said that stooges of external powers got the first result of public’s “no confidence”.
The media should run these results and tell that the people have wiped out the “gang of thieves” from their former strongholds, Farrukh Habib said. The minister tagged a copy of unofficial results of the KP local government elections, which showed PTI winning 32 seats, independents 12, JUI-F seven, PML-N four and PPP only one.
