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Pre-Poll Rigging Alleged: PTI's Asad Qaiser Blocked by Police from Reaching Airport for Gilgit-Baltistan Campaign
PTI's Asad Qaiser and PML-N's Saad Rafique both missed their flights to Skardu after Punjab and Rawalpindi police blocked all access routes to the Islamabad airport. The incident, following the recent expulsion of PTI lawmakers from Gilgit-Baltistan, has triggered fierce cross-party condemnation and allegations of pre-poll rigging ahead of the June 7 elections.
ND
by News Desk
2026-05-30
Pre-Poll Rigging Alleged: PTI's Asad Qaiser Blocked by Police from Reaching Airport for Gilgit-Baltistan Campaign

Detailed Report

  • The Airport Grounding: A major political controversy erupted on Saturday morning when senior Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader and Secretary General of the Tehreek-i-Tahafuz-i-Ayin-i-Pakistan (TTAP), Asad Qaiser, was forcefully prevented from entering the Islamabad International Airport. Qaiser was scheduled to board a commercial flight to Skardu to spearhead the party's ongoing legislative assembly election campaign in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB). Qaiser accused the Punjab Police of systematically barricading all primary entry arteries leading to the terminal, asserting that law enforcement personnel held him in a state of de facto detention on the asphalt until his scheduled flight took off.

  • Cross-Party Fallout and Mass Disruption: In an unusual development that exposed the sheer scale of the administrative lockdown, senior leader of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and former federal minister, Khawaja Saad Rafique, revealed that he and 12 of his party workers were similarly trapped in the same police dragnet. Rafique lambasted the Rawalpindi police on social media for shutting down public traffic corridors without providing any reasonable explanation, which forced dozens of ordinary citizens—including women, children, and the elderly—to languish in intense heat. Rafique also criticized Air Blue management for prematurely sealing boarding gates despite being fully aware of the forced police gridlock outside.

The Border Expulsion Precedent: The high-profile airport blockade arrives less than 24 hours after a separate dramatic escalation in GB’s Ghizer district, where sitting PTI MNA Junaid Akbar and his campaign team were intercepted by local security apparatuses and officially expelled from the territory. While the caretaker GB government under Chief Minister Yar Muhammad insisted the expulsion was a legal response to code of conduct violations, opposition parties have collectively slammed the moves as state-sponsored pre-poll rigging.

  • Rigging Allegations and the ECP's Silence: The double grounding has amplified fears regarding the transparency of the upcoming June 7 GB legislative elections, which are already facing a contentious four-month delay. PTI Information Secretary Sheikh Waqas Akram pointed out a glaring double standard, highlighting that active federal ministers are currently traversing GB and utilizing state machinery to campaign for the ruling coalition in direct violation of the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) code of conduct, while opposition leaders face physical containment. Echoing these concerns, former National Assembly Opposition Leader Omar Ayub warned that the current administrative high-handedness is a precursor to an engineered polling day, predicting that returning officers will ultimately be coerced into issuing fraudulent "Form 47s" to declare regime candidates victorious.
Tagged:

#GBElections2026 #AsadQaiser #SaadRafique #IslamabadAirport #PrePollRigging #PMLN #PTIOfficial #BreakingNewsPakistan
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