Fact-check: Confirmed. Form-45s missing from ECP website as reported by Pattan

On July 3, Pattan released a five-page audit report stating that the complete Form-45s of 21 constituencies in Lahore (20 provincial assembly and one National Assembly) had not been published on the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) website, even after five months of the election.

Instead, Form 46s were uploaded under the title of Form-45s for these constituencies.

In response, the electoral body claimed in a press release that Pattan’s report was “misleading” insisting that all Form-45s "had been uploaded on the website”.

Geo Fact Check found Pattan’s report to be accurate, and ECP’s statement to be inaccurate.

Claim

On July 3, Pattan released a five-page audit report, where it stated that complete Form-45s of 21 constituencies in Lahore, 20 of provincial assembly and one of the National Assembly, had not been published on the ECP’s website for the February 8 polls. 

Form-45s contain the valid number of ballots cast in favor of each contesting candidate at each polling station of a constituency.

The report further added that the ECP instead of uploading Form-45s had published Form-46s under the title of "Form-45s" for 21 Lahore constituencies. Form-46s provided details about the number of ballot papers used at each polling station or booth of a constituency.

The constituencies the report named were: PP-146, PP-148, PP-150, PP-151, PP-152, PP-153, PP-154, PP-156, PP-157, PP-159, PP-160, PP-162, PP-163, PP-164, PP-166, PP-167, PP-170, PP-172, PP-173 and PP-174.

While the one National Assembly constituency named in the report was NA-125. 

Pattan further noted that as per Section 98[2] of the Elections Act 2017, “The [Election] Commission must within 14 days from the date of the poll, publish the name of each contesting candidate and the total number of votes received by him/her.”

Two days later, on July 5, the ECP issued a press release alleging that the audit report was “misleading”, adding that all the Form-45s were available on the website, without specifying the date they were published.  

Fact

On examining the data available on the official website of the ECP, Geo Fact Check found Pattan’s claim to be true and that ECP only uploaded complete Form-45s after the audit report.  

Geo Fact Check scrutinised the Google Drive available on ECP’s website where Form-45s of all constituencies across Pakistan were to be uploaded.

It found that in the 21 constituencies of Lahore, listed by Pattan, the folder titled “Form-45” in fact had mostly Form-46s till July 3. But then on July 4, the data on the Google Drive begin to change as ECP started to replace the Form-46s with Form-45s, without offering an explanation.

Geo Fact Check has video recordings that show Form-46s quickly changing to Form-45s on July 4. It also has screenshots of all 21 folders, which show that they were “modified” on July 4 and July 5 by the ECP.  

Interestingly, on the ECP website some of the folders, such as that of PP-152, PP-153 and PP-160, are still listed as having only been modified in February, when screenshots taken by Geo Fact Check clearly show that changes were made to the folders on July 4.

Geo Fact Check also contacted Hamid Raza Khan, the spokesperson of the ECP for a comment. However, instead of responding back, the ECP issued a press release dismissing Pattan’s report and claiming that all Form-45s were already uploaded on its website.

The ECP’s press release is misleading as it does not provide a date for when the Form-45s were uploaded in reality on the website, which Geo Fact Check found was after Pattan’s audit report was published.

Winners in each constituency as per Form-49:

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