Imran Khan's party-backed independent candidates spring surprise in Pakistan elections

Jailed former premier Imran Khan's party-backed independent candidates seemed to have sprung a surprise as the results of the general elections in Pakistan started trickling in on Friday following unusual delays, leading to allegations of rigging.

Votes are being counted in Pakistan after Thursday's general election which was marred by allegations of rigging, sporadic violence and a countrywide mobile phone shutdown.

Pakistan authorities were moving at a snail's pace on Friday to announce the election results that in a surprising development showed disqualified and jailed ex-Prime Minister Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf supported independent candidates leading the show.

Khan, 71, a cricketer-turned-politician and the founding chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), is behind bars and barred from contesting.

PTI candidates are running as independents after they were not allowed to use the party symbol - a cricket bat.

The polling ended at 5 pm on Thursday but the first official result was announced 10 hours later at 3 am on Friday, irking many about the delay and giving fuel to the rumour mills to indulge speculation of foul play to manipulate the outcome.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) so far officially uploaded only four results of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) assembly, which all were won by the PTI-backed independents. The commission has not uploaded even a single result of the National Assembly (NA) or other provinces.

However, private media channels showed that PTI-backed candidates were in the lead.

According to the Express Tribune newspaper, PTI-Independents have won six NA seats, followed by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) with four and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) with three.

However, BBC Urdu in its results showed that PTI-Independent and PML-N won four seats each and PPP three.

Dawn newspaper put PML-N in the lead with four wins, followed by PTI-Ind with three and PPP 2 seats.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has acknowledged a "huge" voter turnout in favour of its arch-rival PTI, however, it remains hopeful that its supremo Nawaz Sharif will get a record fourth term as the country's prime minister.

Sharif was the favourite to win the election as he was being backed by the powerful Army.

In total 266 National Assembly seats were up for grabs in Thursday's election out of 336, but polling was postponed on at least one seat after a candidate was killed in a gun attack in Bajaur.

Another 60 seats are reserved for women and 10 for minorities and are allotted to the winning parties based on proportional representation.

A party must win 133 seats out of 265 being contested to form the next government.