Hawa Alam Nuristani, chief of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) , at a press conference on Thursday urged the candidates to “follow the law” and “allow the IEC to continue its work.”

“We will not bow under pressure from any group and we will do our work with neutrality and independence,” Nuristani said.

Nuristani believes that the IEC has “pursued its work according to the law so far.”

“The biometric votes are credible for us,” Nuristan said.

“The vote recount process has been completed in 26 provinces and is ongoing in one province.”

“The process has not yet started in seven other provinces due to the candidates’ protest,” Nuristani mentioned.

Also: “137,000 votes have data and they also have details about which provinces they came from,” Nuristani said, adding that “the observers have signed the results sheets of these votes.”

"The recount process so far has been witnessed by observers," said Nuristani, "If the votes of some of the devices were not correct (had a wrong date or time), why did the observers of the electoral campaign teams sign the result sheets?"

On Tuesday, Abdullah’s campaign team called for the invalidation of 300,000 disputed votes. Otherwise, they said, they will oppose the vote recount process.

The team also warned that they will launch widespread protests if the 300,000 votes are not excluded from the “clean” votes by Saturday, November 30.

The 300,000 disputed votes are from over 8,400 polling stations, which, according to the Election Commission, should be recounted. But, so far, only around 2,000 of the polling stations have been recounted.

Some election campaign teams are protesting against the recounting of votes in seven provinces in the northern and northeastern provinces.

The electoral team have asked the IEC to “first separate fraudulent votes” and then continue the recounting process.