LAHORE, Jan 6: The PML-N alleged on Monday that by-elections scheduled for Jan 15 could not be free and fair as the government was using all possible foul methods to win the two provincial seats in Lahore, vacated by its leaders.

Party’s provincial secretary-general Khwaja Saad Rafiq and the candidates for PP-142 and PP-147, Inamullah Khan Niazi and Zaeem Qadri, said at a news conference that rival candidates had been provided with bogus ballot papers and identity cards to ensure the defeat of opposition contestants.

Polling staff was also being chosen from among the personal friends of the ruling party candidates, they claimed.

The police, the district administration and the Chief Minister’s House have been working in close coordination with one another to deprive the PML-N of its seats, they maintained.

But, they said, Lahore was for the PML-N what Larkana was for the PPP. The PML-Q candidates were destined to lose, no matter what rigging methods used and how much public funds wasted to win the two seats, they said.

They alleged that the police were forcing the PML-N supporters to change loyalties.

Such methods could create a law and order situation, entire responsibility for which would rest with the ruling party, they warned.

Mr Niazi alleged the Punjab chief minister was using all those methods in Lahore which he had used in his native city, Gujrat, to manipulate the elections.

He regretted that the Election Commission was not taking any step to prevent the planned rigging despite several applications sent by the PML-N.

Mr Qadri claimed that the ideologically-committed workers of the PML-N and the

PPP would sweep the by-elections.

Khwaja Saad criticized the government for its failure to extend any help to the Pakistani community in the United States, facing a very difficult situation at the hands of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

He said he had directed the PML-N leaders in the US to help their countrymen.