TAXILA, May 12: Contrary to the official claims, state machinery and political influence was used in Taxila, Wah Cantonment and Hassanabdal to take maximum number of people to the pro-Musharraf rally held in Islamabad on Saturday.

From Taxila a caravan of more than7,000 people travelling in some 3,000 vehicles left for the federal capital to participate in the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) rally.

Hassanabdal Tehsil Nazim Shafqat Khan also led a rally of some 5,000 people in over 1,500 vehicles to Islamabad.

Sources told this reporter that each union council nazim was tasked with ensuring the participation of at least 300 supporters.

It is important to mention here that attendance of low- ranking officials of the district government, tehsil administration, and other departments was taken to ensure their presence in the assembly.

A revenue department official identified as Ghulam Hussain caught the attention of local mediapersons while doing the same at the Burhan interchange on the Islamabad-Peshawar motorway.

It was also learnt that officials of the revenue department took roll-call of the “hired participants” so that payment could be made to them later on.

Due to little response from the public, scores of labourers in Taxila and Hassanabdal were taken to Islamabad posing them as PML supporters, the sources said.

Some participants in Hassanabdal told this correspondent that they were daily-wage workers and their services had been hired at Rs100 per person. There were also reports of people being offered Rs300 for their travel to the federal capital.

Moreover, Saturday was another day of ordeals for commuters of Taxila, Wah and Hassanabdal due to the unavailability of public transport.

Hundreds of people, including women, children and patients, had to face hardship for the second consecutive day as the vehicles were “hired” to take the participants of the rally in the federal capital.