MIANWALI: Hundreds of residents of Thameywali will have to travel seven kilometres to cast their vote in the upcoming local government elections if the new polling schemes is to be viewed.

Local residents said one of their polling booths had been shifted to village Jhore, which is seven kilomteres from Thamewali. If taken a hilly terrain route, then they will have to walk three kilometres to reach the polling station.

The Thameywali union council has 13,248 registered voters, of them 7,172 are males and 6,076 females.

There used to be two polling stations at Thameywali village and one polling station in Jhore village in the previous elections. This time, the election authorities shifted the voters of block 6 and 7 to Jhore.

Residents call the shifting of polling station to a far off village as a rigging, and an attempt to bar voters from casting their votes.

Malik Zaman, a resident of Thameywali, said that he would not allow his women to walk three kilometres to cast their vote in Jhore.

Malik Ahmed Khan, another voter of Thameywali, told Dawn the election authorities had pushed them back to the era when women were not allowed to speak through their ballot. He said that their elders had decided not to allow any female member of the tribe to cast vote in Jhore.

Many parts of Mianwali district had the tradition of not allowing women to cast vote. Women voters of this particular area had in the recent past been allowed by their male guardians to cast their votes.

Voters say this is what a candidate based in Jhore wanted to see. Another candidate, based in Thameywali, who is likely to lose votes because of ban on women voters, approached the authorities at the local election commission to get the polling scheme changed but to no avail.

Malik Muhammad Riaz, of Thameywali, rejected the new polling scheme, saying that the authorities had violated rules and regulations and also committed pre-poll rigging.

District Election Officer Muhammad Jaffer told Dawn that his duty was only to convey each returning officer about rules and regulation of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). He said according to ECP rules, polling stations would be in a locality to benefit the voters and returning officers were responsible for the polling schemes.

The returning officer could not be contacted for comment, while his staff said that the officer was on an inspection tour of polling stations.

Published in Dawn, November 6th, 2015

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