March 14, 2002	Thursday	Zilhaj 29, 1422

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ISLAMABAD, March 13: The chief election commissioner (CEC), justice (retd) Irshad Hasan Khan, said on Wednesday that votes in the forthcoming general election would be counted at the polling stations immediately after the polling was over, and that the result sheets would be duly signed by the polling agents.

After the CEC’s meeting with political leaders Haji Nawaz Khokhar, member of the PPP’s central executive committee, and Munir Ahmed Khan, ARD’s information deputy secretary, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced that no interference in the electoral process would be tolerated from any quarter.

The CEC informed the politicians that contesting candidates would be at liberty to nominate polling agents of their choice and to observe the whole process in order to ensure transparency.

He stated that the leaders of the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy and the Pakistan People’s Party had reposed full confidence in him and assured him of their parties’ full cooperation in holding free, fair and transparent elections.

Mr Khan remarked that the ECP was an independent constitutional body and was not an attached department of the federal government.

He said the National Reconstruction Bureau, district or tehsil Nazims had not interfered in any way with the delimitation of constituencies undertaken by the commission.

Instead of making vague remarks, solid proofs must be brought up to substantiate the alleged interference by any Nazim or other government functionary in the electoral process, he said, adding that the delinquent official would be publicly exposed and a strict action would be taken against him.