Addressing candidates’ concerns: PPP demands free service for verification of voters’ thumb impressions

KARACHI: The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) has demanded that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) should provide free of charge services to aggrieved candidates to probe constituencies marred by poll-rigging allegations, including a free service for verification of the voters’ thumb impressions.

In a statement issued on Friday, PPP Sindh President Nisar Ahmed Khuhro said that conducting free and fair general elections in the country was ECP’s responsibility and as such it should also resolve the complaints of aggrieved candidates at the earliest.

In this regard, free of charge services should be provided for probing the conduct of the general polls in any constituency where allegations of rigging are pending, he said. These services, according to him, should also include verification from the National Database and Registration Authority of thumb impressions of voters who cast their ballots in these constituencies.

Khuhro said that if complaints of the aggrieved candidates remained unresolved, then it would make the entire conduct of the Election Commission in holding the general elections, questionable. He advised that since the ECP had allocated a massive sum of Rs21 billion for conducting the general elections, the expenses incurred to probe the conduct of elections and verification of the thumb impressions of voters in contested constituencies should be borne out of the same budget.

“I fail to understand for what cause an aggrieved candidate is being asked to submit a prescribed per vote fee for doing verification of the thumb impressions,” he said “When the Election Commission has taken up the responsibility of conducting free and fair polls, then the cost to verify thumb impressions should also be borne by it.”

Allegations abound

The PPP is among a host of political parties that have alleged widespread rigging in the elections in Karachi and have either heaped criticism on the ECP, held protests or sought recounts.

On Thursday, rejecting the election results, a meeting chaired by PPP Karachi President Saeed Ghani agreed that the polls were rigged as well as replete with coercion and threats to the party’s activists and polling agents. The leaders agreed that undemocratic forces, with the connivance of all the relevant stakeholders, including the Election Commission of Pakistan and the polling staff, influenced the results.

The PPP leaders said an organised conspiracy was hatched to steal the electoral mandate of Karachi’s people, adding that after freeing the city from the clutches of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, it has deliberately been handed over to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.

They said the PPP’s polling agents were not issued Form-45, adding that those who refused to leave without it were made to wait until the next morning. They claimed that the ballots cast against the PTI’s candidates were deliberately destroyed.

On July 29, Ghani, had also offered to step down from his position over the party’s “unsatisfactory performance” in general elections in the city.

In a message posted on his Twitter account, Ghani said he had neither been censured by the party leadership nor was he being asked to step down, instead he had made the offer to the party chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on a voluntary basis.