MUZAFFARABAD: Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Prime Minister Sardar Tanveer Ilyas on Wednesday accused the opposition PPP and PML-N of running away from the forthcoming local bodies (LB) elections “in anticipation of their defeat at the hands of PTI”.

Talking to a group of journalists, he also shrugged off opposition’s concerns about the security issues.

On Tuesday, Leader of the Opposition Chaudhry Latif Akbar had urged the AJK Election Commission to make “fool proof security arrangements and avoid deployment of any [provincial] law enforcement agency personnel to aid and abet rigging in favour of the ruling party”.

“…We want to make it clear that we will not accept any such forces. Instead, the army personnel should be deployed to maintain law and order during elections,” he had said at a press conference, which was held in the backdrop of a letter by the ministry of interior to the ministry of Kashmir affairs.

In the letter the interior ministry had discreetly declined to provide federal law enforcement agencies personnel to the AJK government on account of the prevailing situation in the country and had instead asked the Kashmir Affairs Ministry to convey to the AJK government that it should conduct the polls through its own resources.

On his part, PM Ilyas maintained that his government had fulfilled its responsibility of providing fiscal resources to the Election Commission and it was even ready to “fulfil the demand of the opposition parties to hold the polls under the supervision of the army.”

“It’s this pro-PTI atmosphere the opposition is looking for excuses to get the polls postponed… But let me declare again that elections will not be postponed under any circumstances. We will not let the oppositionrun away from this much cherished exercise,” he said.

Published in Dawn, November 3rd, 2022