The release of preliminary results for Afghanistan’s April 5 presidential election will be pushed back two days, to Saturday, reported the country’s election commission on Wednesday.

Election officials could not give exact reasons for the postponement of the data, which had been expected Thursday.

However, Noor Mohammad Noor, the commission’s spokesman, said it would still release a third set of partial results on Thursday.

“We will most likely release the preliminary results on Saturday, April 26,” Noor told dpa.

One election official said “fraud allegations” have delayed the release of the preliminary results. He did not give any other information.

The commission has so far released two sets of partial results.

Some 7 million Afghans voted for eight people competing in the race.

Abdullah Abdullah is 11 per cent ahead of his chief rival, Ashraf Ghani, a World Bank technocrat, as of the last partial vote count.

But Abdullah is still unlikely to win the 50 per cent of votes that would bring him to outright victory, allowing him to succeed outgoing president Hamid Karzai.

Both the leading candidates have said there were fraud in the vote.

Election officials have also said there were widespread fraud.

The election commission announced on Sunday it quarantined ballots of 1,400 polling stations across the country, saying they need auditing.

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