KARACHI, Jan 26: The Muttahia Majlis-i-Amal candidate, contesting the by-election in NA-250, Raja Arif Sultan, has condemned the transfers of officials on a mass scale before the election and has urged the election commission to cancel all such transfers.

Terming the transfers as pre-poll rigging, he said the MMA was convinced that transparent elections could not be held under General Musharraf’s administration and the MMA was participating in the election process just to expose the government.

He said the sympathetic election officials were posted to favour the official candidate who belonged to a political party that was the coalition partner of the government.

He said only an independent and non-partisan election commission could guarantee fair and free elections. He said the transfers were being carried out to bring in the hand-picked officials so that illegal practices could be carried out on the polling day.

He said many cases had been reported during the last elections when election officials were even involved in stuffing the ballot boxes with bogus votes.