October 15, 2002	Tuesday	Sha'aban 8, 1423

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QUETTA, Oct 14: Balochistan National Party (Mengal) on Sunday accused the government of carrying out massive rigging in the election for keeping the nationalists away from parliament.

BNP-M Secretary-General Habib Jalib Baloch, at a press conference, said the party had expressed its apprehensions regarding rigging before the polls, which proved true on Oct 10, when government resources were used for the success of king’s party candidates in the province.

Mr Jalib alleged that returning officers had allowed many people involved in cases of heinous crimes to contest the election.

He said the king’s party candidates had violated the rules and regulations of the Election Commission spending millions of rupees on the election campaign while expenditure of Rs1.5 million for National Assembly and Rs1 million for provincial assembly candidates was allowed.

The BNP-M leader alleged that Nazims had interfered in the polls and government resources were used in the election campaign of the king’s party.

He said wheat and flour was distributed among people in villages of Chaghai district to influence the voters.

He alleged that thousands of voters could not cast their votes as their polling stations were made in other areas and they faced difficulties in finding their names in the electoral lists. He said thousands of names were not enrolled in the lists.

Mr Jalib said polling agents were not allowed to sit in the polling stations and after polling, votes were not showed to them.

He said polling agents of the party were not provided written results by the returning officers.

He said that under a conspiracy the government tried to keep the nationalist and democratic forces away from parliament. However, despite efforts of the government, some nationalists reached the assemblies, he said.

He said central committee of the BNP-M would hold its meeting in a few days to evolve a line of action.

The party’s vice-president, Sajid Tareen, and Information Secretary Sana Baloch were also present.

PPP: People’s Party Parliamentarians, Balochistan, on Monday demanded re-polling for NA-266, Nasirabad, and alleged massive rigging by the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-i-Azam) candidate.

Balochistan PPP President Javed Ahmed at a press conference with the party’s candidate for the seat, Munawar Ali Khosa, alleged that bogus votes were allowed by the election staff in favour of PML-Q candidate Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali.

He alleged that voters were harassed by the law enforcement agencies and they were not allowed to enter the polling stations in the areas dominated by PPP.

He said the PPP candidates were defeated using official resources by the king’s party.

He said that in PPP dominated areas polling was stopped at 5pm while in other areas people were allowed to cast their votes till 9pm.

Javed Ahmed demanded that the result of NA-265, Loralai, should be announced and said the PPP candidate, Mir Baz Mohammad Khan Khetran, was leading with 16,721 votes but the result had not been announced so far.

He said that in nine polling stations of Duki subdivision, more votes were polled than the registered votes.

He urged the Election Commission to take notice of rigging and take action against those responsible.