Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Syed Zulfikar Bukhari informed a United States congressional body that the country’s 2024 general elections were “engineered to silence the democratic voices of millions,” branding them as the “most brutally rigged elections in Pakistan’s history.”
Addressing the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the US Congress, Bukhari—a former aide to ex-prime minister Imran Khan—delineated what he described as systematic electoral manipulation and political suppression. “Let me start with the event that shattered whatever remained of Pakistan’s democratic facade—the general elections of 8 February 2024,” he told the panel. “The rigging began long before election day itself.”
He detailed a range of alleged irregularities: the removal of PTI’s electoral symbol (the cricket bat), disqualification of candidates, banning of rallies, destruction of banners, and restrictions on party flags. PTI leaders, he asserted, were jailed, exiled, or forced into hiding.
Despite these formidable obstacles, Bukhari stated that the Pakistani people turned out in massive numbers and “voted for change.” According to his account, independent observers and data sources indicate that PTI-affiliated independent candidates secured between 170 to 180 seats in parliament. However, Bukhari alleged that the results were systematically altered within 24 to 72 hours, thereby denying PTI the mandate to form a government. “There were constituencies where population figures were [inflated overnight]—in one case, a seat with 400 registered voters recorded 450,000 votes in the final Form-47,” he claimed.
He emphasized that the manipulation was deliberate and pervasive, asserting: “Let me be very clear—Pakistan’s 2024 elections were neither free nor fair. They were engineered to silence the democratic voices of millions.”
