KARACHI, July 14: The monitoring committee of the Pakistan Peoples Party for local bodies’ elections on Thursday alleged that the military regime was employing pre-poll rigging to hijack the whole election process. The committee, which is headed by Taj Haider and include leader of the opposition in Sindh Assembly Nisar Khuhro and MNA Sherry Rehman, claimed that in cities like Karachi, the regime’s ethnic wing was illegally occupying union council offices and hoisting ethnic flags there and on government vehicles.
They said that several hundred polling stations had been shifted to far-flung areas from the abode of voters in various districts. In Karachi, the old polling station of Chanesar Goth had been shifted to Mahmoodabad. In Umerkot, dozens of polling stations had been shifted with those for males and females sundered by over dozens of kilometres.
They further pointed out that a polling station had been set up at the Chief Minister’s House in Tharparker’s Union Council, Kaloi, where no opponent was allowed to cast his vote.
Dozens of polling stations had allegedly been established on the agriculture farms of the Arbab family as well as on land holdings of ministers, ruling party MNAs and MPAs, far away from the concentration of the population.
The PPP leaders demanded transfer of the said polling stations from the farms to villages.
They also alleged that in Karachi an ethnic party was getting new votes registered well after the announcement of the local bodies’ election schedule.
They urged the Election Commission to ensure that no additional list of voters was issued in Karachi or elsewhere before the completion of the electoral process.
The PPP monitoring committee further alleged that an intending candidate for nazim in UC Jafar Leghari, Sanghar was being threatened by the ruling party’s members against implementing his intention.
While it also alleged that a former Awam Dost Nazim of Tharparker, Jhirmirio Mohan Lal, of the minority community, had been put in solitary confinement in the Hyderabad Jail and was being forced to join the ruling party.
