HYDERABAD: In the Cantonment Board Hyderabad (CBH) elections being held after 17 years, 32,399 voters in eight of the total 10 wards will go to the poll on Saturday (today) to elect eight general councillors. Army personnel with magisterial powers have been deployed at 28 polling stations. Troops are also taking care of security outside the polling stations.
Two candidates have already returned unopposed. They are Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM)-backed candidate Malik Mohammad Yasin (ward-3) and Abdul Aziz (ward-8).
In all, there are 27 candidates in the fray. Eight of them belong to the PPP, seven to the MQM, two to the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and the remaining 10 are independent candidates. Religious party like Jamat-i-Islami, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, PML-N PML-F and Sindhi nationalist parties have not fielded their candidates.
Barring some constituencies like ward-10 which has highest number of registered voters — 11,028, those like ward-6 or 7 has one single polling station for voters. Ten polling stations are set-up in ward-10.Contesting candidates have not come up with any complaint of mismanagement so far.
Door-to-door and shop-to-shop canvassing — which is hallmark of any local bodies polls — however continued by candidates in all constituencies.
There is one to one contest in ward 1, 5, 9 and 10 between PPP and MQM candidates. They are PPP’s Faqir Mohammad and MQM’s Nisar Ahmed in ward-1; MQM’s Mohammad Iqbal Memon and PPP’s Nadeem Ahmed in ward-5; PPP’s Lal Rehman and MQM’s Abdul Rasheed and MQM’s Jamil Rizvi and PPP’s Adnan Shah.
CBH is now class-I ward given its over 100,000 population. Until 1998, CBH had four wards but the number rose to 10 following delimitations, whose validity was challenged and eventually the cases were disposed of.
It is considered to be one of the oldest garrison having been established in 1874.
Election material has been distributed to polling personnel and transported to the respective polling stations.
Published in Dawn, April 25th, 2015
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