December 17, 2007	Monday	Zilhaj 6, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Dec 16: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has claimed that so far it has received 503 pre-poll complaints regarding violation of election code from candidates and political parties.

However the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has challenged the figures saying that some 1,100 complaints have been submitted by the party alone.

The data posted by the ECP on its official website shows that out of 503, the highest number of 216 complaints have been filed in Sindh, followed by 208 in Punjab, 36 in NWFP, 27 in Balochistan, 15 in Islamabad and one in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

It shows that the ECP has received highest number of 151 complaints regarding transfers and postings of civil servants, followed by 127 complaints about violation of election code and 104 about the incidents of violence during the election campaign.

The ECP has also received 77 complaints about setting up of polling stations and deployment of polling staff, 20 complaints about law and order situation, 16 about electoral rolls and two complaints regarding delimitation of union councils.

When contacted, chairman of the PPP’s Election Monitoring Cell Senator Sardar Latif Khosa said the party had submitted some 1,100 complaints with the ECP, but no action had been taken on any of them.

He said besides this, newspapers were full of the reports of violation of election code and if all these were counted then the figure would cross 5,000 figure.

The PPP senator said the ECP had promised that it would post the voters’ list on its website in October, but it failed to do so despite the fact that only 23 days were left for election.

He said now the ECP had been stating that the list would be put on the website in the first week of January 2008 whereas polling was scheduled for Jan 8.

Senator Khosa said it seemed that the ECP had put the names of some 30 million voters due to the fear of the Supreme Court which had ordered the ECP to include the names of all those people in the list who had attained the age of 18 years.

He alleged the ECP was reluctant in putting the voters’ list on its website as it had entered some bogus names in it.

He further said that the SC had ordered the ECP to done away with the condition of showing computerised national identity cards for registration as voters and at the time of polling. However, he said, the ECP was again stating that the CNIC would be a must to cast vote.

Senator Khosa said that National Database Registration Authority (Nadra) had admitted that so far it had provided CNICs to only 82 per cent males and 52 per cent females.

He said the ECP would deprive more than 10 million people from using their right to vote if it put the CNIC condition on voters.

The PPP senator regretted that the ECP did not take any notice of the large-scale transfers and postings which took place in Sindh and Punjab after announcement of the election schedule.

He said that party chairperson Benazir Bhutto had written several letters to the ECP and the members of the party’s Election Monitoring Cell also paid visits to the ECP to inform it about the ongoing violations of the election rules, but the ECP remained unmoved.

Our Reporter adds: The election monitoring cell of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has sent dozens of pre-poll rigging complaints to the Election Commission (ECP).

Releasing a report based on complaints the cell received during the last three days, PPP Information Technology Adviser Tariq Malik said here on Sunday that the voters list was not available in the electronic form currently and list of polling stations specially ‘improvised poling stations’ had not been made available to political parties.

Mr Malik alleged that in constituencies NA-48 and NA-49, a tehsildar, Imtiaz Janjua, was running the election campaign of some candidates.

He said recently three PPP workers were gunned down and several others were injured in Tambu, Balochistan, but the culprits could not be arrested. Similarly, an army officer, Maj Javed, pressurised PPP candidate Sadiq Umrani to support an independent candidate, Zahoor Khoso, he alleged.

In NA-61, Talagang, three SHOs had been posted after the announcement of the election schedule, he claimed. SHO Kot Addu Rafiullah Niazi and SHO Dera Din Pannah along with revenue officer were harassing PPP candidates.

Several reports of irregularities have been reported in Mirpur Khas where former Sindh chief minister Arbab Ghulam Rahim was “openly getting favours from government officials”.

In Faisalabad, he said, District Nazim Rana Zahid Tausif was using state machinery in favour of his brother, Rana Asif Tausif. “It is also reported that DSP Sehwan has been sent on forced leave for three months because he did not give protocol to former chief minister when the latter was going to Larkana,” he said.

He said there were reports that police raids were being carried out on the offices of PPP candidates.

In one such incidents, PPP candidate Nasira Arshad’s office was raided and about a dozens workers were arrested.

The ECP was also informed that the caretaker minister for Railways, Mansoor Tariq, is brother-in-law of PML-Q leader Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain. “The PML-Q candidate is brandishing weapons in front of the election office of Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar,” he said, adding that there were several complaints in NA-142 Kasur, PS-45 Hyderabad and PP-223 Kot Addu, Muzaffargarh.