KARACHI, Aug 18: The Pakistan People’s Party has rejected Thursday’s electoral process in the first round of the second local body elections, alleging that “a fraud had been imposed on people through the government-nominated constellation.”

Senator Taj Haider, head of the PPP’s election monitoring cell, announcing his party’s decision, also contested the Election Commission’s claim of 50 per cent turnout in Karachi and other parts of the province.

He was of the view that due to the difficult and time-consuming voting procedure, the turnout remained thin in most parts of the city. “Therefore, the EC’s claim of 50 per cent turnout is a farce.”

He argued that such a fraud was made possible because the EC did not take notice of the complaints lodged with it. This, he added, had also encouraged ballot fixing. The PPP leader alleged that at many places, polling agents of Awam Dost candidates had forcibly been evicted from polling stations which, he claimed had later been taken over by Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s activists and its proxy volunteer corps.

He alleged that massive rigging had been resorted to at the women’s polling station in UC Kaloi, District Tharparkar, where the chief minister’s cousin, Arbab Anwar, had been sitting to supervise the stuffing of ballot papers and deny voters the right of secret ballot.

Ms Sherry Rahman, head of the PPP’s policy planning, claimed that rigging and ballot stuffing had taken place at polling stations 16 and 17 at Karachi Milk Plant (UC 4), Gulshan Town.