Votes of 35 Polling Centres Declared Invalid

Independent Election Commission (IEC) Wednesday declared votes of 35 polling centres invalid and said votes of 30 other centres will be recounted

In total, frauds and violations have been committed in 125 polling centres all over the country.

The spokesman for the IEC, Noor Mohammad Noor, remarked that the partial counting results of 17 provinces have been declared and results of the three other provinces, including northern Badakhshan province, Kabul and Balkh are likely to be announced tomorrow.

However, there is no less than a week left for the announcement of primary results of the Afghan parliamentary poll, and the commission says ballots of the 22 polling centres that were announced suspicious were recounted in presence of representatives from Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) and are under the IEC investigation.

"Tomorrow some three provinces' partial vote count results will probably be announced," the IEC spokesman, Mr Noor said. "Votes of 125 polling centres in which frauds and violations have happened, is divided into three categories, the first category is declared invalid by the IEC board, the second category will be recounted and the third one will be reviewed."

Meanwhile, 24 people accused of using forged cards and being involved in electoral fraud have been arrested in three different provinces.

The Afghan Senate House urged that election frauds and violations should strictly be pursued.

Some parliamentary election candidates and a number of Afghan citizens have raised concerns about huge fraud and violations, fearing it would negatively affect the elections process and put its credibility under question.

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