20 March 2004	Saturday	28 Muharram 1425

VEHARI, March 19: The local government representatives and ruling party legislators have been mobilizing all resources to win support for their favourite candidates in byelections for union council Nazims, Naib Nazims and councillors.

The bypolls for Nazims are being held in nine union councils in the district - five in Mailsi, two in Vehari and as many in Burewala. In UC-2, there are three main contestants - Aziz Anwar Chaudhry (ruling party), Rana Tahir Mahmood and Arif Warraich; in UC-6 Ali Abbas Masood (ruling party) and Chaudhry Zahid Iqbal (PML-N); in UN-28 Tauseef Ahmad Khan and Yasir Khan (ruling party); in UC-32 Afzal Khichi (ruling party) and Advocate Bilal; in UC-39 Mian Riaz (ruling party) and Allah Ditta Khalid; in UC-43 Zubair Sundhal (ruling party), Liaquat Ali and Yasir Mushtaq Bhaba; in UC-53 Ahmad Yar Manais, Mohammad Akhtar and Mohammad Shafiq; in UC-69 Chaudhry Mukhtar (ruling group) and Chaudhry Atteequr Rehman; and in UC-88 Mumtaz Chishti (ruling group) and Chaudhry Amanullah Ghuman.

Sources said the ruling party Nazims and other representatives of the district and tehsil administrations had mobilized the entire government machinery to muster support for their candidates.

Abusing their authority, they claimed, the officials had announced development projects in their respective union councils for the benefit of the ruling party candidates.

In all there are 71 vacant seats in the district, including nine Nazims, one Naib Nazim, eight councillors, two labour councillors, 14 women councillors and 25 minority councillors.