ISLAMABAD: More than two years after the controversial February 8, 2024 general elections, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-backed candidates have failed to secure a single victory in election tribunals despite filing the bulk of challenges centered on alleged Form 47 manipulations.
According to the Free and Fair Election Network’s (Fafen) data, tribunals have decided 246 out of 374 petitions -- nearly two-thirds -- with a staggering 242 dismissed outright.
PTI-backed independents, who lodged around 55 percent of all petitions (86 NA and 120 PA), repeatedly alleged that provisional consolidated results in Form 47 were unlawfully altered from polling station counts in Form 45. Yet, Fafen’s tracking shows zero successes for these claims in decided cases. Tribunals have overwhelmingly rejected PTI-linked petitions, either on procedural grounds or for lack of evidence.
“Among the dismissed petitions, 123 were rejected on grounds of non-maintainability, including 44 relating to National Assembly constituencies and 79 to Provincial Assembly constituencies. A further 26 petitions were dismissed after the allegations could not be proved during trial. In addition, 12 petitions were withdrawn, 16 were dismissed for non-prosecution, and two were dismissed for miscellaneous reasons, including the death or resignation of the returned candidate,” said Fafen’s Mudassir Rizvi.
He said the pace of disposal of petitions is rather slow, despite legal requirements that such petitions be decided within 180 days of their filing. But, he underlined, there is no provision in the law that empowers ECP to enforce this explicit deadline. So far, 246 petitions have been decided, of which 242 were dismissed. As many as 123 appeals have been filed in the Supreme Court to challenge the tribunal dismissals. Fafen has not yet been able to obtain copies of judgments in 63 dismissed petitions, including 16 related to the National Assembly constituencies and 47 to Provincial Assembly constituencies, and is therefore unable to determine the reasons for dismissal in those cases.
Of the 246 decided cases, only four were accepted -- all in Balochistan provincial assembly constituencies and filed by JUI-P or National Party candidates, not PTI.
In contrast, PTI’s high-volume challenges, primarily targeting PMLN winners, have yielded nothing but dismissals.
Among the 242, the vast majority of dismissed petitions directly undermine PTI’s core narrative of systematic Form 47 rigging. Additional cases were withdrawn (12), dismissed for non-prosecution (16), or for miscellaneous reasons.
This PTI has long maintained that the elections were stolen through Result Management System discrepancies and Form 47 alterations. However, after full trials in a subset of cases, tribunals found the claims unsubstantiated. As Mudassir Rizvi highlighted, the data shows most rejections stemmed from procedural lapses or unproven assertions rather than validated rigging.
PTI and others have challenged 123 tribunal decisions in the Supreme Court, where only 18 have been ruled upon so far (three partially or fully accepted, 15 dismissed). With 105 appeals still pending, the party continues to pursue legal avenues, but the tribunal record so far represents a clear setback for its post-election strategy.
For PTI, the Fafen data shows that despite aggressive campaigning on “stolen mandate” and Form 47 controversies, the party has simply failed to prove its rigging claims in the vast majority of cases that reached adjudication.
