Claim: Awami National Party’s (ANP) leader Samar Haroon Bilour has won the elections from PK-83 Peshawar XII.
Fact: Contrary to the claim, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-backed independent candidate Meena Khan Afridi has bagged this seat.
Elections 2024
Ahead of the 2024 general elections, Imran Khan’s PTI faced obstacles, including multiple key leaders and supporters behind bars, defections, and the loss of its ‘cricket bat’ symbol, which has raised concerns about fair campaigning and a level playing field.
Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician, won the 2018 election but is not on the ballot in the 204 elections due to imprisonment, which is decried as a politically motivated conspiracy by Khan and his supporters.
Just a week before the election, Khan was given three additional sentences; fourteen years in the cipher case, ten years in the Toshakhana case and seven years in a case about his marriage being ruled un-Islamic.
The Awami National Party (ANP) is a left-wing, secular, Pashtun nationalist party, predominantly influential in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP), with a presence in urban Sindh and beyond. It was officially established in 1986, and traces its roots to Khan Abdul Wali Khan, who carried forward the political legacy of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, also known as Bacha Khan. The party is currently led by Asfandyar Wali Khan.
Election result
According to the results issued by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), PTI-backed independents are leading by winning the most seats in the National Assembly. However, none of the political parties have been able to get a simple majority to form the government.
PTI-backed independent candidates in Peshawar have alleged election fraud, blaming returning officers (ROs) and district returning officers (DROs) for changing election results. They vowed to legally challenge the results to uphold the people’s mandate.
On the other hand, ANP has conceded defeat in the elections, particularly in KP.
Fact or Fiction:
On 9 February 2024, X (formerly Twitter) user Engr Irshad Yousafzai (@engrirshad13) congratulated (archive) ANP’s Samar Haroon Bilour for winning the elections.
The user was responding to a tweet by @sunopakhtunkhwa, a radio network in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa which tweeted that the ANP’s provincial spokesperson and former Member of Provincial Assembly (MPA) had lost to the PTI’s Meena Khan Afridi.
An image of Form-47 is attached to the viral tweet, according to which Meena Khan Afridi got 38,117 while Samar Bilour got 333,500 votes. It’s important to note that Form-47 details the results of a constituency, including the number of votes cast and cancelled.
Soch Fact Check found the claim to be false. Bilour congratulated Afridi on his victory via a tweet by uploading a photo of Form-47. She also visited him personally to extend her wishes to him on his victory which was also reported by The Nation and UrduPoint.
After a very long night , finally got “some” form of a paper . My congratulations to @MeenakhanAfridi and heart felt thanks to all my supporters who ran an amazing campaign pic.twitter.com/3BDRPyhtU8
— Samar Haroon Bilour (@SamarHBilour) February 9, 2024
Afridi has also shared Form-49 on X himself, further confirming that he won the election from PK-83. Form-49, also referred to as the Final and Official Result Form, is published in the Gazette of Pakistan. It features the names of candidates, the political parties they are affiliated with and the total number of votes obtained in a constituency.
Virality:
The claim can be found here on X.
Conclusion: The official results indicate that PTI-backed independent candidate, Meena Khan Afridi emerged as the winner in PK-83 Peshawar XII, defeating ANP’s Samar Bilour.
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