June 17, 2007	Sunday	Jumadi-us-Sani 01, 1428

HYDERABAD, June 16: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) would request the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to rectify errors in voters list, and move the Sindh High Court if the commission failed to do so, warned the deputy leader of opposition in Sindh Assembly Makhdoom Jamiluzzaman on Saturday.

Mr Jamiluzzaman, who is also divisional president of PPP, told a news conference at the press club that 50 per cent names of PPP supporters had been deleted from new voters list in the eight districts of the defunct Hyderabad division.

Hyderabad PPP President Zahid Ali Bhurgari and MPA Ms. Sassui Palijo were also present at the conference along with a large number of local party leaders.

The party had made its apprehensions public when the voter-lists were being prepared but it appeared the federal and provincial governments had held the commission hostage, he said.

He claimed that besides bogus lists names of a large number of expatriate voters had been included in the lists, names of many others had been distorted in a deliberate bid to disallow their right of franchise and many names had been duplicated in different lists of more than one constituency. He described the errors as an intentional attempt to commit technical rigging in the elections. The opposition would raise the issue in national and provincial assemblies, he said.

Giving evidence in support of his claims Mr Jamiluzzaman said that 300 voters who were registered in PS-72 constituency had cast votes in the by-elections for PS-71 Kotri during recent by-elections. The election commission was informed about it but it did nothing, he said.

He said that names of voters from Sanghar district had been listed on the voters list of Matiari district, which was a stronghold of PPP and the constituency of ARD chairman Makhdoom Mohammad Amin Fahim, to ensure success of Pir Pagara’s nominee in the upcoming elections.

He described it as "…a pre-planned and pre-election rigging at which Chief Minister Dr. Arbab Ghulam Rahim is a specialist."

He said that his party would wait until June 30 to allow time to the election commission to rectify errors in voterlists. In case it failed to do so a panel of lawyers would file a writ petition in the Sindh High Court.

MPA Zahid Ali Bhurgari claimed that the names of 8,000 PPP voters had been deleted from voterlists in the city taluka and 7,000 in Qasimabad taluka.

On the contrary number of voters had swelled from 193,200 to 258,000 in Latifabad taluka, which was a stronghold of Muttahida Qaumi Movement, he said demanding that the upcoming elections should be held on the basis of old voter-lists.

MPA Ms. Sassui Palijo said that in the entire district of Thatta especially the talukas in the coastal belt Mirpur Sakro, Ghora Bari, Kharochhan and Keti Bunder, names of thousands of local voters had been excluded and replaced with thousands of outsiders.