KARACHI, July 27: The People’s Party Parliamentarians has provided a long list of alleged government excesses against Awam Dost Panel candidates for the local body election and complained that victimization of candidates and their supporters is continuing.

According to the party election monitoring team, Muktiar Khudani, an ADP candidate for the seat of naib nazim of the Thatta Union Council-1, was allegedly kidnapped by the Shirazi group. At the time of hearing, the group presented a letter of withdrawal from him while he himself was absent. The candidate had not withdrawn from the contest, the team clarified.

In the Oongar Union Council, the committee stated, ADP candidate for the seat of naib nazim, Qasim Bubar, whose papers had been accepted, was kidnapped and at the time of hearing of the appeal he was allegedly escorted by people of the same group and was pressured to state that he wanted to withdraw his nomination. However, Mr Bubar said he wanted to keep out of the conflict and, denying his own signatures on nomination papers, said he had never filed nomination papers. The monitoring team said the returning officer while rejecting his papers had even overlooked that he had personally appeared at the time of submission of nomination papers.

In the Choohar Jamali Union Council, threats were being issued to Maulana Aziz Ullah Jatoi, an ADP candidate for the seat of nazim, forcing him to withdraw his papers after his name had been accepted.

The PPP monitoring team said that in the Darya Khan Soho Union Council, an appeal against ADP candidate for nazim’s seat Babu Shah was rejected but later the returning officer was allegedly visited by a leader of the same group after which he again called Mr Shah and told him that the appeal against him had been accepted and his papers had been rejected.

It said that in Larkana, an ADP candidate for the seat of nazim, Mohammad Chandio, who had been arrested earlier and kept at different lockups to force him to change his loyalties, was allegedly again being chased by police since yesterday. It said police had raided his house in the morning but could not get him since he was in hiding. The aim was to prevent him from submitting nomination papers.

In Thar, the PPP team said, a decision of the Mithi returning officer, rejecting nomination papers of a government candidate for the seat of naib nazim of Kheesar, Ameer Hassan Abbas Ali, on the ground that his name was not included in the voters’ list, was overturned due to the alleged direct pressure of the chief minister. The news of rejection of nomination papers of the government candidate had appeared in the press on July 25.

The team alleged that on Wednesday, about 500 people, many of whom were armed, came to the court and started threatening ADP candidate for nazim’s seat Jalal Uddin Bajeer. In view of the threats, an application had been filed in the court of the district judge, requesting protection. However, no action had been taken as yet.