Islamabad: The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) suffered a third blow in less than four months as an election tribunal on Wednesday disqualified another member of parliament belonging to the party.

The tribunal annulled the election of Mohammad Siddique Khan Baloch from a National Assembly constituency in Multan during the 2013 general election citing massive irregularities and ordered repoll.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) central leader Jahangir Tareen, who lost against Baloch, had challenged the result at the Multan-based tribunal soon after the 2013 poll.

The verdict came on the heels of the disqualification of PML-N stalwart Sardar Ayaz Sadiq from the National Assembly and post of Speaker by another election tribunal in Lahore on Saturday.

Sadiq, poised to appeal to the Supreme Court, had defeated PTI chairman Imran Khan in a Lahore constituency in 2013 and the latter had challenged the result in a petition to the tribunal.

In the first week of May, an election tribunal had unseated railways minister Khwaja Sadiq Rafiq, annulling his 2013 election, also from a Lahore constituency.

But the Supreme Court on an appeal filed by Rafiq had suspended the tribunal’s verdict till the apex court final decision in the case, thereby restoring his National Assembly membership. The case is being heard by a Supreme Court bench.

“The Multan verdict is a hat-trick for Imran Khan,” said Rehman Khan, wife of the former cricket hero-turned-politician, whose party rules northwestern Khyber Pakthunkhwa province and is the third largest group in the parliament.

The tribunal was to announce its decision at 10 in the morning but delayed it for several hours, while police had tough time preventing clashes between charged PML-N and PTI workers gathered nearby.

Local television channels showed scenes of jubilation as PTI workers in Multan, a major town in southern part of Punjab province, and other cities danced and distributed sweets.

The successive favourable verdicts by election tribunals marked rejuvenating developments for PTI whose allegations of organised rigging in 2013 election were dismissed in July by a high-level judicial commission.

The commission, composed of three Supreme Court judges, including its then chief Nasirul Mulk, had, however, pointed many lapses by the election machinery in conducting the 2013 nationwide polls.

The PTI chairman is now demanding that four provincial members of the Election Commission should resign as according to him they were responsible for the lapses.

Imran Khan has in fact publicly accused them of being involved in election rigging in 2013.

The PTI chairman on Tuesday strongly reacted to a rebuff by the Election Commision, which in response to his letter stated that being a constitutional body it was not answerable to and would not accept any diktat from any political party.

As PTI’s Jahangir Tareen addressed a news conference in Multan after the tribunal’s decision in his favour, party workers shouted “Go Nawaz Go” slogans against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Tareen reiterated the demand that the four members of the Election Commission must quit — a demand the PTI plans to pursue by all means, including street agitation.

The opposition leader in the National Assembly, Syed Khurshid Shah, who is from PPP, backed the PTI demand, saying the members “have become controversial.”