LAHORE: Lack of interest among minorities in bypolls
By Amjad Mahmood
LAHORE, March 15: Minorities are losing interest in the local bodies system, as the Election Commission has received only 219 nominations for the bypolls to 1,209 seats reserved for them in union councils in the Punjab.
The minority representatives count denial of funds, re-introduction of separate electorate system, holding of by-polls when completion of the local bodies term is only months away as some of reasons for this lack of interest.
"Minority councillors are being ignored in allocation of funds for development projects suggested by them in their constituencies," lamented Michael Javed, former Sindh Assembly member.
Mr Javed, who is a Karachi district council member, was here to visit Shakargarh (Narowal) to join protest meetings against gang-rape of a Christian girl by some roughnecks of the area.
In certain union councils, sewerage lines were laid and streets constructed up to the houses of the Muslim voters. Work on the schemes were stopped or diverted to other areas from where residences of minorities started, he said.
He added that the Nazims were of the view that as they did not need to get minority votes for their election so they would not include the areas/lanes populated by non-Muslims in their uplift projects.
"Are these Nazims not meant to take care of their respective union council as a whole? Do election laws exclude the areas of non-Muslims from the domain of Nazims, who almost in all the cases are Muslims?" he wondered.
How in such a case any minority candidate would contest for a councillorship when he didn't have any funds to carry out the development schemes in his constituency, the very purpose for which local bodies have been formed? he asked.
All-Pakistan Minority Alliance's Asher Chaudhry believes that the short period left in the completion of the local bodies term is another dilemma facing minority candidates.
"Exhausting one's money and energy only for the six-month term and that too when one is not sure to be able to get approved uplift projects for his voters will not be a realistic decision."
A majority of the minority population is against a separate electorate system, which infuses a sense of alienation among them, he said. To protest separate electorate, people from minorities had boycotted the local body polls in 2000 and as a result of which at least 45 seats in Karachi remained as vacant, Javed said.
In certain union councils there lived only one or two non-Muslim families and either being very well-off and business-oriented or being too poor to think of political activity, they do not take interest in the political process, he said.
According to the date available with the provincial offices of the Election Commission, political activity among minorities is seen stronger in areas falling in and around Lahore.
For 13 vacant LB seats in the Lahore district, at least 33 nomination papers were received. For seven seats in Sheikhupura as many nominations were filed and similar was the case with six seats in the Sialkot district.
Contrary to this trend, only nine candidates came forward for 101 seats lying vacant in the Rawalpindi district, six for 114 seats in Jhang, one for 55 seats in Dera Ghazi Khan, five for 76 seats in Multan, four for 60 seats in Bahawalnagar and none for 26 seats in the Bhakkar district. By elections to the vacant seats are being held on March 28.
