On June 19, the Election Commission Gilgit-Baltistan (ECGB) announced the final results of the June 7 polls, with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) bagging nine out of 21 seats to emerge victorious. The delay in finalizing the result of the elections in Gilgit-Baltistan, a territory that is a part of the Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India, was largely due to widespread allegations of misappropriation leveled by Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
The PTI insisted that, like the 2024 general elections, the Gilgit-Baltistan polls too were rigged by the military establishment to sideline the party. Eyewitnesses confirmed discrepancies in voting patterns and final results across polling stations, in addition to the pre-poll alterations in constituency boundaries and voters lists. On top of that, the PTI is being forced to field independent candidates, with its leaders frequently barred from campaigning.
The state’s marginalization of the PTI from the electoral process is a continuation of the military establishment’s clampdown on the party following Imran Khan’s removal as the prime minister in April 2022. Since then the party leadership has faced incarceration. Khan has been in prison since August 2023, in addition to thousands of PTI workers being jailed over “anti-state” actions – most notably the riots of May 9, 2023, when Khan was first arrested. Last year, 75 PTI leaders were jailed in a mass conviction over the 2023 protests.
