Hammad Azhar, a senior PTI leader and former minister, took to X, a popular social media platform, to mock the PML-N’s poor performance. He said that the PML-N had only won 17 seats in the National Assembly, according to the Forms-45 issued by the election commission. Forms-45 are the official documents that show the results of each polling station.
He also claimed that the PML-N had won “30-40 seats in the Punjab Assembly”, the provincial legislature of the largest and most populous province of Pakistan. Punjab has 371 seats in its assembly, of which 297 are directly elected. In the 2018 elections, the PML-N had won 129 seats in the Punjab Assembly, while the PTI had won 123 seats.
This is a sharp decline from the 2018 elections, when the PML-N had won 84 seats and emerged as the second-largest party after Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). The PTI, which is the ruling party in the country, has claimed a landslide victory in the 2024 elections, winning 176 seats in the National Assembly.
Azhar’s claims have not been verified by the election commission, which is still in the process of finalizing the official results. The PML-N has not yet conceded defeat or accepted the provisional results, and has joined hands with other opposition parties to form the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), a coalition that aims to challenge the PTI government.
The 2024 elections have been marred by controversy and violence, as several incidents of clashes, attacks, and disruptions were reported from different parts of the country. The elections were also held amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed over 50,000 lives and infected over 2 million people in Pakistan.