GUJRANWALA, Jan 25: District Returning Officer (DRO) Arshad Mahmood Cheema on Friday issued notices to respondents for Saturday (today) in petitions challenging transfers and postings in the police department allegedly made on political motives.

The court summoned the city police officer (CPO) and station house officers (SHOs) who have been transferred and posted after a ban imposed by the Election Commission of Pakistan on general transfers.

The PML-N and PPP candidates for NA-99, Rana Nazir Ahmad and Ch Abdullah Virk, alleged that their rival PML-Q candidate Rana Shamshad Ahmad had got posted several SHOs of his choice in his constituency who were harassing his opponents.

Nazir Ahmad Ganjana, an additional district and sessions judge, had heard this case as acting-DRO. However, his powers as DRO were clipped by the ECP shortly before he was to announce his verdict he had reserved a day before and District and Sessions Judge Arshad Mahmood Cheema was conferred with DRO’s powers on Thursday.

Former MPA Mudasser Qayyum Nahara, who is contesting for NA-100 and PP-101 and PP-102 as independent candidate after quitting the PML-Q, has also moved the court to declare all polling stations of his constituencies sensitive.

Nahara pleaded that his rival PML-Q candidate and former federal parliamentary secretary Rana Bilal Ijaz, who happens to be a relative of Rana Shamshad, was planning hooliganism and rigging on the polling day. He demanded that all polling stations of his constituencies should be declared sensitive to avoid any untoward incident. The DRO directed CPO DIG Khadim Hussain Bhatti to submit a report in this connection too on Saturday (today).

Meanwhile, the DRO rejected the pleas of two PML-N aspirants, former MPA Shaukat Hayat Chattha and former tehsil nazim Shaukat Manzoor Cheema, against PML-Q’s bigwig Hamid Nasir Chattha. The complainants alleged that Chattha’s son Ch Fiaz Chattha was the district nazim and was running his father’s electioneering openly, flouting the elections code of conduct announced by the ECP. — Correspondent