PPP Leads Gilgit-Baltistan Elections as PTI, Independents Cry Foul
By Sayed Abdullah | June 8, 2026
The votes were still being counted when the first accusations began. Pakistan Peoples Party had pulled ahead in Gilgit-Baltistan's legislative assembly elections, securing ten of the 24 directly contested seats, with the PML-N trailing at six and independents — including two backed by PTI — winning seven. But the numbers alone did not capture the mood. By nightfall, both PPP and PTI were alleging irregularities, ballot box anomalies, and delayed results. The election had been peaceful. The aftermath was anything but.
For a region that rarely makes national headlines except during tourist season or border flare-ups, the GB elections were a reminder that political competition in Pakistan does not soften just because the altitude rises. The stakes were local — control of a 33-seat assembly with six reserved seats for women and three for technocrats — but the players were national. PPP, PML-N, PTI, and a scattering of religious and regional parties had all contested, and the results, preliminary as they were, gave PPP a clear advantage. But clarity in numbers did not translate into acceptance. Both the PPP and PTI spent election night raising questions that the election commission has not yet answered.
What Actually Happened
The election itself was held after a four-month delay caused by the region's brutal winter. Over 960,000 registered voters — 566,097 men and 396,937 women — were eligible to vote across 1,391 polling stations. Security was heavy: 6,000 Punjab Police personnel and 2,000 from Islamabad Police were deployed, with stations classified as normal, sensitive, and highly sensitive depending on the area. Despite that, polling day passed without major violence. The problems emerged after the ballots were cast.
PPP Secretary General Nayyar Hussain Bukhari went public with a complaint about delays in receiving Form-45, the crucial document that records vote counts at each polling station. "We have contacted the chief election commissioner and informed him about the matter," he said. PPP spokesperson Shazia Marri went further, calling the delay "unacceptable" and pointing to altered voter lists and shifted polling stations as evidence of rigging. The party highlighted the relocation of the Balachi polling station in Astore-II's Bunji area, where 206 registered voters live and which, the PPP noted on X, "is known for its strong support" for the party. That single decision triggered protests and the closure of the Gilgit-Skardu Road. For a party that had just won the most seats, the complaints were striking. Victors do not usually spend election night alleging the process was rigged.
PTI's objections were even sharper. The party claimed its candidates were leading until 7:00 PM, after which "suspiciously high turnouts exceeding 80 percent and individual ballot boxes having 700-800 votes" began to emerge from certain polling stations. PTI called the situation "a blot on the entire electoral process and its transparency," alleging a "well-planned and systematic conspiracy" involving fake ballot papers in Nagar, withheld Form-46 documents, and the harassment of opposition workers. The language was characteristically dramatic, but the specifics — high turnout in a region where turnout is typically moderate, and individual ballot boxes stuffed beyond reasonable capacity — raised genuine questions. The election commission, as is often the case, remained silent through most of the night.
The political landscape was crowded. Twenty-three candidates from PPP, 22 from PML-N, 15 from the Istehkam-i-Pakistan Party, 11 from PML-Q, and smaller contingents from other parties had contested. Independents dominated the field — 266 out of 396 candidates — reflecting the fragmented nature of GB's electoral politics. Key matchups included PPP's Advocate Amjad Hussain in GBA-1 and former Chief Minister Hafiz Hafeezur Rehman of the PML-N in GBA-2. Both won their seats, according to unofficial results. But the broader picture was one of a closely fought election in which no single party could claim an outright sweep, and in which every party had grounds to question something.
The Bigger Picture
Gilgit-Baltistan occupies a strange space in Pakistan's constitutional architecture. It is not a province. It has an assembly and a chief minister, but its powers are circumscribed by Islamabad in ways that provinces do not experience. The region's political significance is amplified by its geography — it sits at the mouth of the Karakoram, borders China, and is central to the CPEC route. But its people have long complained of being treated as an afterthought by the federal government. Elections here are not just about who controls the local assembly. They are about who gets to negotiate with the centre for resources, for infrastructure, for the kind of attention that flows naturally to Lahore and Karachi but dries up somewhere north of Mansehra.
The fact that both PPP and PTI alleged rigging — despite PPP emerging as the largest party — is worth pausing on. In a typical Pakistani election, the winning party celebrates and the losing parties cry foul. Here, the winner was among the loudest critics of the process. That suggests either genuine irregularities that affected different parties in different constituencies, or a preemptive political strategy to delegitimise the results in case coalition negotiations go badly. Both explanations are plausible. Neither inspires confidence in the electoral process.
The involvement of the GB Supreme Appellate Court added a layer of judicial oversight that is rare in Pakistani elections. The court had directed the election commission to ensure free and fair polls following a formal request from KP Chief Minister Sohail Afridi to Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Shamim Khan. That is an unusual intervention — a provincial chief minister asking a regional court to oversee an election in a territory he does not govern. It hints at the broader political tensions that surround GB: KP, governed by PTI, shares a border and cultural ties with the region, and PTI has invested heavily in building its presence there. The court's involvement did not prevent the allegations. But it did signal that someone was watching.
What This Means for Pakistanis
For most Pakistanis, Gilgit-Baltistan is a postcard — a place of mountains and apricot blossoms, visited in summer and forgotten by winter. But the people who live there, all 963,034 registered voters of them, experience the same frustrations with electricity, inflation, and governance that define life in the rest of the country. A petrol station in Gilgit charges roughly the same as one in Rawalpindi, but the income levels are lower and the winter is longer. When elections are held and the results are disputed, the consequences are not abstract. They affect who controls the development budget, who gets a road built, who decides where the next school will go.
I spoke to a friend from Hunza last night, yaar, who was following the results on his phone while sitting in a Karachi café. He was frustrated — not with any particular party, but with the predictability of it all. "Every election, same story," he said. "Counting delays, Form-45 missing, and by morning someone will have made a deal." His cynicism was earned. It is the cynicism of a population that has learned to expect very little from its elected representatives and is rarely disappointed. The GB elections matter because they are a test case for whether Pakistan's electoral machinery can function in a remote, difficult terrain without the controversies that have tainted national polls. On Sunday night, it was not clear that the test had been passed.
My Take
I'll be honest — the fact that PPP won the most seats and still complained about rigging tells me that something is broken in how we process elections. When winners do not trust the system that produced their victory, the system has lost legitimacy regardless of the outcome. PTI's allegations are serious, and they deserve investigation, particularly the claims about ballot boxes with 700-800 votes in areas where turnout rarely exceeds 50 percent. But PPP's complaints are equally concerning because they come from a position of strength, not weakness. A party that has just won ten seats should be celebrating, not issuing press statements about Form-45 delays.
The election commission has an opportunity here — to respond transparently, to release the data, to demonstrate that the allegations are either baseless or being addressed. History suggests it will do none of those things. But the people of Gilgit-Baltistan deserve better. They braved winter delays, heavy security, and the logistical nightmare of mountain polling stations to cast their votes. The least the rest of the country can do is pay attention to what happened next.
Do you think the GB election results will stand, or will the rigging allegations force a deeper investigation? Share your thoughts.
Sayed Abdullah is the founder and editor of Prime Pakistan. Based in Karachi, he writes about politics and the stories that shape Pakistani lives. Read more.
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Sources
- Election Commission of Pakistan — Unofficial and preliminary results.
- PPP and PTI official statements — Allegations of irregularities.
- Dawn — Reporting on the GB elections.
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