PESHAWAR, March 4: Women rights bodies have expressed concern over what they termed barring women from contesting the forthcoming local bodies by-elections in different districts and asked the chief election commissioner to take legal action against the persons and political parties involved in this illegal act.

Various organizations, which are part of an Aurat Foundation's campaign for ensuring women's maximum participation, claimed that in Upper and Lower Dir major political parties had joined hands for stopping women from filing nomination papers.

In a press release, the campaigners claimed that on the first day of filing of nomination papers on Wednesday, activists of a religio-political party formed monitoring teams to stop woman from filing their papers. Last date for filing of nominations is March 5.

The campaigners stated that now the teams were pressurising the women who had managed to submit their papers to withdraw nominations. By disenfranchising women voters, political parties had been violating their fundamental rights, they said.

Aurat Foundation resident director Ms Rukhshanda Naz said that even during the general local bodies elections in 2000 and 2001, these political parties had entered at a meeting into an agreement to deprive women of taking part in the polls and casting their votes.

The campaign groups stated that the meeting had taken place at a Timergarah hotel, which was attended by the Jamaat-i-Islami, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (F), Peoples Party Parliamentarians, PPP-Sherpao, Awami National Party, Pakistan Muslim league-N, PML-Q etc. Except the PML-Q, all other parties agreed that women would not be allowed to contest polls against the seats reserved for them.

In Lower Dir, 196 of the total 204 reserved seats remained vacant in 34 union councils, whereas in Upper Dir 148 seats remained vacant of the 186 in 31 union councils.

The collective drive has been launched by different regional women's rights and civil society groups in the 24 districts of the NWFP. The campaign aims at ensuring maximum participation of women in the by-elections, increasing women representation by filling maximum vacant seats, assisting women candidates, developing and providing local support structure for the women candidates and creating a conducive environment for them to cast votes and contest elections.