August 18, 2002	Sunday	Jamadi-us-Saani 8, 1423

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ISLAMABAD, Aug 17: Former prime minister and PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto has asked the chief election commissioner (CEC) to take notice of what she called “mischievous and malicious” relocation of polling stations in her constituency to new and strange places making vote casting difficult.

“I look forward to your timely intervention to do justice to voters in my constituency and to neutralize the moves of those wishing to rig the elections”, she said in a letter to the CEC on Saturday.

Ms Bhutto said her constituency for National Assembly (currently NA-207) comprised Ratodero, Mirokhan and Shahdadkot from which she had contested and won every election since 1988.

The polling stations in the constituency, she added, had remained fixed since the pre-partition days and during all the elections held since 1988 because they were most convenient to the largest number of voters and in official rather than private premises.

The former premier said that as the opponents of the Pakistan People’s Party were afraid of the popularity of the party, they were indulging in pre-poll rigging by shifting the polling stations to new places, which were strange to the voters as well as made the cast of vote difficult.

She feared that the shifting of polling stations would affect all voters, particularly women’s voters, “as they will be apprehensive of leaving their villages for more distant places. This will disenfranchise and deprive my voters of their fundamental right to freely vote. Elections under such circumstances will be far from transparent.”

Ms Bhutto called upon the CEC to call the list of polling stations in the past elections and maintain the precedent. “When they are compared with the new polling stations, it is evident that this is a malicious and mischievous move.”

She exhorted the CEC to repeal the changes for the convenience of the voters. She enclosed a list of the polling stations showing that a polling station at Government Primary School, Garhi Ghuda Bukhsh Bhutto, where there is a population of 5,600, has been shifted to the village of Dera Illahi Bukhsh, where the population is only 810.

“These shiftings are contrary to the rules of fair play that stations be in the most populous places rather than at distant ones.”