KARACHI, Jan 27: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) will participate in the forthcoming general polls, scheduled in October, for which an election cell has been formed to deal with the selection of candidates.

This was decided at a recent joint meeting of the steering committee and provincial bodies of the party.

PTI Secretary General Mairaj Muhammad Khan stated that a strategy body had been constituted to plan election campaign and meet the people programme. The committee had also been empowered to decide matters about any election alliance. Besides, he said, a manifesto committee had also been set up to update the party’s policy.

The PTI has demanded for the constitution of an independent election commission (EC) which must interact with political parties to frame rules and regulations to ensure transparency in the polls.

The meeting urged the EC to make voting compulsory at least for two general elections, leaving sick and elderly, so that a major consensus could be evolved on important national issues. It also demanded for reducing voters’ age to 18 years as was the case in the recent local government elections.

Welcoming government’s decision to hold elections on the basis of joint electorate, the meeting also hailed the increase in seats of the national assembly and provincial assemblies.

The party flayed the inhuman treatment meted out to the Afghan war prisoners by the US that had kept them in cages in Guantanamo, violating human rights and the rights of prisoners of war which were upheld in the Geneva convention.

The party pointed out that Pakistan had shown its willingness to resolve the Kashmir issue either bilaterally, through third party mediation or through the UN by implementing its resolutions on Kashmir.