A senior Pakistani bureaucrat on Saturday alleged that the chief election commissioner and the chief justice were involved in poll rigging in the recent election as he resigned from his post, taking the “responsibility for all this wrongdoing”.

Former Rawalpindi Commissioner Liaquat Ali Chattha’s remarks came amidst jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party began nationwide protests against alleged rigging and stealing of its mandate in the February 8 elections.

Speaking to reporters at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium, Liaquat Ali Chattha said the candidates who were “losing” the elections “were made to win”.

“I am taking the responsibility for all this wrongdoing and telling you that the chief election commissioner and the chief justice are also completely involved in this,” he was quoted as saying by the Dawn newspaper.

Liaquat Ali Chattha resigned from his office after “accepting responsibility” for manipulation of poll results, it said.

Liaquat Ali Chattha said “stabbing the country in its back does not let” him sleep.

“I should be punished for the injustice I have done and others who were involved in this injustice should also be punished,” he said.

The former bureaucrat said there was “pressure” on him to the extent that he contemplated suicide but then resolved to present matters before the public.

“It is my request to the entire bureaucracy to not do anything wrong for all these politicians,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has strongly rejected the allegations Chattha has made against the chief election commissioner.

In a press statement, it said, “The Election Commission of Pakistan strongly rejects the allegations levelled by the Commissioner Rawalpindi on the chief election commissioner or the election commission and no official of the election commission never issued any instructions regarding changing the election results to the Commissioner Rawalpindi.

“Neither is the commissioner of any division ever appointed as a DRO, RO or presiding officer, nor do they ever play a direct role in the conduct of elections.” However, it said that the matter would be investigated.

Earlier, Punjab caretaker Information Minister Amir Mir has also “rejected” the claims of manipulation of election results made by Liaquat Ali Chattha.

Speaking to Geo News, he said that Liaquat Ali Chattha had “not shown any proof” of the alleged tampering of poll results.

Noting that the commissioner was retiring on March 13, Mir said, “I imagine he’s trying to kick start his political career after he retires.” Besides Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA), and others have also complained of rigging during the elections.

Independent candidates – a majority backed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party – won 93 of the 265 National Assembly seats that were contested in the February 8 election.

However, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s two main rivals appear on course to form a coalition government after former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) and Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) formed a post-poll alliance on Tuesday.

The PML-N won 75 seats while the PPP came third with 54 seats. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) has also agreed to support them with their 17 seats.

To form a government, a party must win 133 seats out of 265 contested seats in the 266-member National Assembly.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

With the speculation over his possible switch to the BJP reaching fever pitch after he arrived in New Delhi earlier today, senior Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath will meet the ruling party’s leadership in the capital, sources have told NDTV. The meeting is expected to take place later tonight.

Rumours of Mr Nath and his son, Nakul Nath, leaving the Congress have been doing the rounds for the past few days. They intensified earlier today when Nakul Nath, the lone Congress MP from Madhya Pradesh, dropped the party’s name from his bio on social media and Kamal Nath arrived in Delhi. 

Earlier this month, Nakul Nath had declared himself the candidate from the Chhindwara Lok Sabha seat, which he had won in 2019, without waiting for the Congress to do so. 

“This time, too, I will be your candidate for Lok Sabha elections. Rumours are going around whether Kamal Nath or Nakul Nath would contest the election, I would like to make it clear that Kamal Nath won’t contest the election, I will,” the Congress MP had said while addressing a gathering in his constituency.  

Sources have told NDTV that it is yet to be decided whether Kamal Nath will join the BJP or stop at quitting the Congress. Nakul Nath, however, is likely to get the BJP ticket to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Chhindwara and the modalities of him joining the party are being worked out.

‘You People Are Getting Excited’

After he arrived in Delhi, reporters asked Kamal Nath if was planning to join the BJP and got a non-committal response. When they pointed out that he was not denying the possibility, the former chief minister said, “It is not about denying, you are saying this, you people are getting excited. I am not getting excited, this side or that side, but if there would be any such thing, I would inform you first.”

Denying any such move, Jitu Patwari, who replaced Kamal Nath as the Madhya Pradesh Congress President after the party’s comprehensive defeat in the state elections last year, said in Hindi, “When Jyotiraditya Scindia had quit the party (in 2020) and our government had fallen, every Congress worker had taken Kamal Nath’s ideology and leadership to heart and worked with him. The reports doing the rounds are baseless.”

“Can you think even in a dream that Indira Gandhi’s ‘third son’ will quit the Congress? Can he think of leaving the workers who fought the Assembly elections under his leadership and worked tirelessly to try and make him the chief minister,” he asked.

Mr Patwari also denied rumours that Kamal Nath was upset because he had not been nominated for the Rajya Sabha polls and said that it was the former chief minister who had proposed Ashok Singh’s name.  

Amid a strong buzz of him quitting the Congress and joining the BJP, sources close to Kamal Nath have told NDTV that while he has not resigned from the party yet, he is unhappy with what is happening there and feels that it isn’t the same organisation that he had joined over four decades ago.

The sources said the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister, who arrived in Delhi on Saturday, has not met Union Home Minister Amit Shah or Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and has only heard leaders like BJP Madhya Pradesh President VD Sharma saying that he is welcome to join the party.

Citing that people in Madhya Pradesh’s Chhindwara – a constituency he represented as an MP for nine terms – want him to join the BJP to fast-track development, the senior Congress leader has said that the matter is under his consideration, the sources said. Kamal Nath’s son, Nakul Nath, is the MP from Chhindwara now and speculation is rife that he will also join the BJP along with his father. 

“Kamal Nath has conveyed his unhappiness to the Congress leadership. He feels that Rahul Gandhi is busy with the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra and the party is now being run by the likes of senior leaders Jairam Ramesh, KC Venugopal and Randeep Surjewala,” he said. 

When the sources were asked whether the cause of Mr Nath’s unhappiness was that he was not nominated for the Rajya Sabha polls, they said that was not true. The former chief minister, they said, had pushed for Ashok Singh’s nomination from Madhya Pradesh and did not want senior leader Meenakshi Natarajan, who was reportedly Rahul Gandhi’s pick for the Upper House. 

They said senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh has requested Mr Nath not to leave the party.

‘Congress Was Never In Bio’

Rumours of the former chief minister quitting the party and joining the BJP had intensified on Saturday after Nakul Nath removed ‘Congress’ from his social media bio. The sources, however, claimed Kamal Nath has said that his son never had the party’s name in his bio to begin with.

Kamal and Nakul Nath arrived in New Delhi earlier on Saturday, adding fuel to the speculation.

The Congress has denied reports of Mr Nath leaving the party, citing his long association with it and stressing on the fact that Indira Gandhi had called him her “third son” while campaigning for him in Chhindwara in 1979.

Jitu Patwari, who had replaced Mr Nath as the Madhya Pradesh Congress president after the party’s huge defeat in the Assembly elections last year, said, “When Jyotiraditya Scindia had quit the party (in 2020) and our government had fallen, every Congress worker had taken Kamal Nath’s ideology and leadership to heart and worked with him. The reports doing the rounds are baseless.”

“Can you think even in a dream that Indira Gandhi’s ‘third son’ will quit the Congress? Can he think of leaving the workers who fought the Assembly elections under his leadership and worked tirelessly to try and make him the chief minister,” he asked.

Major Setback

If Kamal Nath does leave the Congress, it will be a huge setback for the party, which is reeling from a string of high-profile exits, including that of former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan earlier this week. The 77-year-old leader has spent most of his life in the Congress and, apart from his stint as the Madhya Pradesh chief minister, has been a Lok Sabha MP for nine terms as well as a Union minister.

Coming just months ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, Mr Nath’s exit will not just be a psychological blow for the Congress at a time when it is trying to put up a spirited opposition to the ruling BJP at the national level, but also leave the party vulnerable in Madhya Pradesh. The BJP had won 28 out of 29 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2019, and the lone winner from the Congress was Nakul Nath.