QUETTA: Sardar Akhtar Mengal, chief of the Balochistan National Party-Mengal, has urged the chief election commissioner to take notice of threats faced by his party’s workers in various areas of the province and said their free movement is necessary for transparent polls.

Speaking at a press conference here on Monday, he said it was the responsibility of the chief election commissioner to ensure protection of the workers so that they could participate in the election campaign without any hurdle.

He said the BNP-M had written a letter to the Election Commission of Pakistan about the difficulties being faced by its members because of telephonic and physical threats by ‘invisible forces’.

The BNP chief said his party’s workers could not go to bazaars due to the threats but non-state actors were moving about freely in cities in vehicles with tinted glasses despite the Supreme Court’s orders against them.

Sardar Mengal said law and order was a major problem of the province and the situation was being deteriorated so that intelligence agencies could bring forward a so-called political leadership of their liking in the coming polls.

He said the federal and provincial government were responsible to resolve the law and order issue but they were powerless before the dominant intelligence agencies.

He said participation in the elections would be meaningless if the law and order situation did not improve and political workers did not get protection.

Some leaders of the National Party, PML-N and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf joined the BNP on the occasion.