National MULTAN City News

Friday, December 06, 2013 From Print Edition

13 0 0 0

PPP, PTI term Multan delimitations pre-poll rigging

From Our Correspondent

MULTAN: Two major political parties the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan Tehrik-eInsaf - have rejected new delimitations in the district and termed them biased and politicised.

Talking to The News here on Thursday, the PPP and the PTI office-bearers said that the delimitations were unconstitutional and undemocratic. They termed the delimitations a pre-poll rigging. They said that both parties had decided to separately challenge the delimitations in the Lahore High Court Multan Bench, the appellate authority and other forums. They said that all assistant commissioners, who were involved in finalising delimitations, had been transferred from Multan to other cities.

PTI district president Aijaz Janjua said that the delimitations in Multan were carried out without the supervision of the Election Commission of Pakistan. The PTI was a stakeholder in the local government polls as it had secured National and Punjab Assemblies slots in the last general elections, but the district administration did not include them in the committee constituted for consultation on delimitations.

PPP south Punjab secretary general and former MPA Malik Amir Dogar said that they had rejected the delimitations as they would benefit the PML-N candidates. The delimitations of union councils were the job of the ECP, instead the Punjab government, he said, adding that the new voters lists prepared by the Punjab government were not acceptable to the PPP. He said that only PML-N members were consulted in the delimitation process.

A senior lawyer, Syed Irfan Haider Shamsi, referring the Lahore High Court orders, said that the LHC division bench had directed the officials not to accept political influence in delimitations of union councils. If there were complaints against delimitations, they were not only against the law, but also contempt of the LHC.

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz district president Bilal Butt rejected the allegations and claimed that the delimitations were purely done on merit by the administration. He said that political rivals were doing propaganda and spreading disinformation against the PML-N. He said that the PML-N believed in fair, free and transparent polls. He said that if the people had complaints against delimitations, then they could go to courts. According to the 1998 census, the district population is 3,116,851, including 1,635,768 (52.48pc) male and 1,481,083 (47.52pc) female. The PPP and the PTI have reservations on the 16 years old census, as according to them, the population has crossed the figure of 4 million.

Officials said the delimitation committee had formed 184 union councils and 1,184 wards in the district. They said that each UC comprised 20,000-25,000 population, while a ward comprised 1,400-1,500 voters. They said that a UC consisted of 13 members, including the chairman and the vice-chairman.

Sources said that the commissioner, who was the appellate authority for complaints against the LG polls, was on three months leave. Despite being on leave, the commissioner came to his office after the office timing and signed so