KARACHI, March 30: City chief of the Pakistan Peoples Party has described the Muttahida Qaumi Movement's claim of 'a clean sweep' in the local body byelections as 'misleading'.

In a statement issued here on Tuesday, the PPP leader, Haji Muzaffar Shujra, pointed out that in Karachi where elections had been held for 11 vacant seats of nazims, only four MQM-backed candidates had emerged winner.

Among the rest, he added, three candidates were from Awam Dost panel, two from Al-Khidmat and one was backed by the PML-Q. The remaining one appeared an independent, Mr Shujra said.

As such, he argued, the MQM's claim of 'a sweep' was wrong. Accusing the MQM of large-scale manipulation and misuse of state machinery, he said that in the interior of Sindh also, 14 candidates, fielded by the PPP-backed panel, had defeated government-backed candidates.

He claimed that in all, 17 candidates backed by the PPP-panel, had emerged victorious in the byelections. He said that the MQM was terrorizing the media "to get its fictitious list of the winning candidates published." He deplored the MQM chief's threat to the media, and said that it was an attempt to gag the press for fostering, what he termed, 'fascist objectives'.