KARACHI: As the Supreme Court made it mandatory for every candidate to file an affidavit with their nomination papers by June 11, the aspirants’ enthusiasm appears to be dampened on Wednesday — the third day of issuance of nomination papers for national and provincial assembly seats in the metropolis.

The apex court made it obligatory for every aspiring candidate for any constituency of the national or provincial assembly to file an affidavit along with their nomination papers by or before June 11 with the returning officer. Failing to file the undertaking by any candidate would result in rejection of his/her nomination papers.

Many independent candidates, who had collected forms to contest the elections, appeared uninterested in filing their nomination papers since they said it was difficult to collect required information in less than a week.

However, election officials said during the past three days about 5,000 nomination papers had been issued to the people willing to contest elections on provincial assembly constituencies across Sindh.

Of them, 1,000 papers had been filed with the returning officers without any affidavit, they added.

A spokesman for the Sindh Election Commission said that till Wednesday, 503 nomination papers were acquired by candidates for seats reserved for technocrats, women and minorities.

Only 18 candidates have filed their papers with the ROs, but none of them had filed any affidavit. Of the 18 candidates, seven belonged to minorities, three women candidates against National Assembly’s reserved seats and eight for the Sindh Assembly women seats.

Prominent among those who had submitted their nomination papers against reserved seats are: Diwanchand Chawla, Raja Aseermal Manglani, Shahnaz Gul, Nida Khuhro and Nusrat Sahar Abbasi.

In reply to a question, an official of the election commission said that the last date for submission of the nomination papers was June 8.

Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2018