Former Pakistani prime ministers and bitter rivals Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan on Friday both declared victory in elections marred by delayed results and militant attacks, throwing the country into further political turmoil.

Sharif’s party won the most seats by a single party in Thursday’s election, but supporters of imprisoned Khan, who ran as independents instead of as a single bloc after his party was barred from the polls, won the most seats overall.

Sharif said his party would talk to other groups to form a coalition government as it had failed to win a clear majority on its own.

Sharif’s announcement came after more than three-quarters of the 265 seats had declared results, more than 24 hours after polling ended on Thursday when 28 people were killed in militant attacks.

Analysts had predicted there may be no clear winner, adding to the woes of a country struggling to recover from an economic crisis while it grapples with rising militancy in a deeply polarised political environment.

The results showed independents, most of them backed by Khan, had won the most seats – 98 of the 245 counted by 1830 GMT.

Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) won 69 while the Pakistan People’s Party of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the son of assassinated premier Benazir Bhutto, got 51.

The rest were won by small parties and other independents.

“Pakistan Muslim League is the single-largest party in the country today after the elections and it is our duty to bring this country out of the whirlpool,” Sharif told a crowd of supporters gathered outside his home in the eastern city of Lahore.

“Whoever has got the mandate, whether independents or parties, we respect the mandate they have got,” he said. “We invite them to sit with us and help this wounded nation get back on its feet.”

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party released an audio-visual message created using artificial intelligence and shared on his X social media account.

In the message, which is usually delivered by word through his lawyers, Khan, 71, rejected Sharif’s claim to victory, congratulated his supporters on “winning” the election and urged them to celebrate and protect their vote.

“I trusted that you all would come out to vote – and you honoured that trust and your massive turnout has shocked everyone,” the message said, adding no one would accept Sharif’s claim because he had won fewer seats and because there had been rigging in the polls.Former cricket superstar Khan has been in jail since August, and was convicted three times in six days in the leadup to the polls for 10, 14 and seven years in cases related to state secrets, graft and an unlawful marriage.

Sharif, 74, a three-time former premier, returned from four years of self-imposed exile in the United Kingdom late last year, having contested the last election from a jail cell on a graft conviction.

He was considered the front-runner to lead the country, having buried a long-running feud with the powerful military.

Sharif said his party would have preferred to win a majority of its own but in the absence of that would get in touch with others, including former President Asif Ali Zardari of PPP, to open negotiations as early as Friday night.

In its first reaction, a senior aide of Khan said PTI leaders would hold talks among themselves and also meet Khan in jail on Saturday to discuss the results, Geo News reported.

Results of the vote have been unusually delayed, which the caretaker government ascribed to the suspension of mobile phone services – a security measure ahead of the election.

Independent members cannot form a government on their own under Pakistan’s complex election system which also includes reserved seats that will be allotted to parties based on their winnings.

But independents have the option to join any party after the elections.

Challenges For Coalition

“A timely announcement of the results, leading to a smooth formation of a new government, will reduce policy and political uncertainty,” Moody’s Investors Service said. “This is crucial for the country that is facing very challenging macroeconomic conditions.”

The delay in the announcement of results was unusual for Pakistan. Karachi’s stock index and Pakistan’s sovereign bonds fell because of the uncertainty.

The main electoral battle had been expected to be between candidates backed by Khan, whose PTI won the last national election, and the PML-N. Khan believes the powerful military is behind a crackdown to hound his party out of existence, while analysts and opponents say Sharif is being backed by the generals.

The military has dominated the nuclear-armed country either directly or indirectly in its 76 years of independence from Britain but for several years it has maintained it does not interfere in politics.

Analysts say a coalition government will struggle to tackle multiple challenges – foremost being seeking a new bailout programme from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after the current arrangement expires in three weeks.

A coalition government “would probably be unstable, weak” and “the big loser … will be the army”, said Marvin Weinbaum, Director of Afghanistan and Pakistan Studies at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

“Because the army really has staked its reputation on its ability to deliver this vote.”

The election was expected to help resolve the crises Pakistan has been dealing with but a fractured verdict “could very well be the basis for even deeper exposure to forces which would create instability”, he said.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

An Indian-American executive died earlier this week, days after he was found with life-threatening injuries following a fight outside a Washington restaurant.

Vivek Taneja, who is from Virginia, and the suspect were at two sister Japanese restaurants on February 2, a police report said. He was “was knocked to the ground by the suspect and hit his head on the pavement”, Washington Posted cited a police report as saying.

This comes amid a spate of attacks on and deaths of Indians and Indian-Americans in the US.

Taneja, 41, left the restaurants around 2 am and the fight broke out on a nearby street, the police report said without describing the nature of the dispute. He lost consciousness in the attack and when the cops arrived, they found him with life threatening injuries and rushed him to a hospital.

He died from the injuries at the hospital on Wednesday, police said.

A search is on for the suspect who was seen on CCTV. He has not been identified.

The police have offered a $25,000 reward for anyone who provides information that leads to his arrest and conviction.

Earlier this week, an Indian student was left bleeding from his nose and mouth after he was attacked by robbers in Chicago. Syed Mazahir Ali, who family lives in Hyderabad, was seen in a video pleading for help following the attack.

Five Indian-origin students were reported dead in the US this year.

Sameer Kamath, an Indian-American studying at Purdue University, was found dead a nature reserve this week. Authorities said he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.

Shreyas Reddy Beniger, a 19-year-old student who held an American passport, was found dead last week, but authorities had ruled out any foul play. Another student, Neel Acharya, was found dead on the Purdue University campus earlier that week, hours after his mother had reported him missing.

Vivek Saini, a 25-year-old student from Haryana, was hammered to death by a homeless man in Georgia’s Lithonia on January 16. Akul Dhawan, another Indian student, was found dead outside the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in January.

In wake of the deaths, US envoy to India Eric Garcetti reassured that the US is committed to make sure it remains safe destination for Indian students.

“Our heart always is touched when any tragedy occurs, whether it is a life taken by somebody or any violence – no matter who they are. We are very committed to making sure that Indians know that the United States is a wonderful place to study and to be safe,” he said yesterday.

Mauris Noronha, the man who shot dead the son of a Shiv Sena (UBT) during a Facebook live session, had been planning his ‘revenge’ for some time. Abhishek Ghosalkar, the son of the Shiv Sena (UBT) leader, could not have possibly suspected Noronha’s plan as he was led to believe the meeting with Noronha was to mend bridges between them.

Mauris ‘Bhai’, as Noronha was known on social media, was a poker player who received praise for helping the poor during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As he became popular due to his philanthropy work, he also became inclined towards politics, which led him to decide on contesting the corporator election.

But there was a problem. The son of the Shiv Sena (UBT) leader didn’t want Noronha to contest, and objected to his candidacy publicly.

Then, a woman filed a case alleging Noronha had raped her. He was jailed for five months in this case. He suspected Ghosalkar to be the architect of the rape allegation to derail his corporator plan.

Eventually, Noronha made the plan to kill Ghosalkar by first winning his trust. Noronha made elaborate plans to send a message that he was no longer interested in the corporator election. This would have made Ghosalkar put down his guard.

On the day of the shooting, Noronha had invited Ghosalkar to a Facebook live session under the pretext of extending an olive branch and to tell the public both had become friends.

Noronha put up banners of Ghosalkar to pretend he supported the Shiv Sena (UBT) leader’s son over his own candidacy.

The outcome of Noronha’s planning is that Ghosalkar agreed to meet him for the Facebook live session. In the video, both are talking in a friendly way, until Noronha gets up and shoots Ghosalkar. After shooting his rival, Noronha ran to the mezzanine floor at his office and shot himself in the head.

Reports said Noronha first tried to shoot himself in the room where he hosted the Facebook live session. But the handgun didn’t work. Within seconds, he loaded another bullet in the handgun and shot himself.

Noronha used the gun of his bodyguard, Amarendra Mishra. The bodyguard’s wife told the police that Noronha, while hiring her husband, asked him to keep his gun in the office. Mr Mishra has been arrested under the Arms Act, which deals with giving a gun to someone without checking if the person is allowed to have the gun.

Noronha fired six rounds, five of which hit Ghosalkar.