LAHORE, July 21: Complaining about grave irregularities in local body polls process, the PPP has demanded that the chief election commissioner should immediately take notice of the situation. Speaking at a press conference here on Thursday, central deputy information secretary Altaf Qureshi and provincial information secretary Naveed Chaudhry threatened that the party may boycott the polls if no step was taken against the irregularities.

In a letter to the CEC, the PPP has pointed out five major abnormalities. These included prime minister’s participation in MQM nominees’ campaign, selection of candidates by the PML for the non-party polls, harassment of PPP-backed candidates and costly TV campaign by former nazims of Faisalabad and Lahore exceeding the allowed expenses limit.

They said as the CEC was from the higher judiciary therefore people were pinning high hopes on him about transparency and fairness of the polls.