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GUJRAT, April 20: The Director Trade Organization (DTO) has asked the Gujrat DCO to make arrangements for fresh chamber elections within 30 days, sources said.
They said that the DTO had declared all the office-bearers of the chamber as defunct except senior vice-president Amir Zafar Sheikh who has not been removed from his office. Mr Sheikh is stated to be on the good books of the Chaudhrys. During the last chamber elections, he was their nominee for the office of the president.
SEALING ORDER: Through a letter (S1.2-40/2001 dated April 16), the Punjab Service and General Administration Department informed the Gujrat DCO that the Ministry of Commerce, Islamabad, had approached this department, intimating that for quite sometime complaints were being received from different members of the Gujrat Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) about mismanagement and violation of different clauses of Memorandum and Articles of Association of the GCCI with special reference to bungling in annual elections.
The letter said that in order to streamline the working of GCCI, the entire record was required to be checked thoroughly with special reference to membership and valid voters’ list by an impartial authority.
“The Ministry of Commerce has decided to hold fresh elections under the supervision of the DCO in his capacity as election commissioner for four seats of the member class, followed by elections of office-bearers of the GCCI,” the letter added.
The GCCI record was sealed by a magistrate in compliance of the direction.
The defunct president Chaudhry Iftihar Ahmed told Dawn by phone that PML-Q president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and chief minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi were the main characters behind the sealing of the trade body due to their differences with his group leader Haji Nasir Mahmood, who is the president of the Shaheen Group (the ruling group of the sealed chamber), president of the Gujrat Pottery Association, district secretary-general of the PML-N and the nazim of a city union council where the Zahoor Elahi house of the Chaudhrys is also situated. Similarly, he said an office-bearer of the member class, Seth Nadeem Ashraf, and chamber vice-president and executive member Haji Shafi Javed are the city president and vice-president of the PML-N, respectively.
Another reason behind the sealing, he said, was the repeated failure of some favourite candidates of the Chaudhrys in the chamber elections during the last three years.
