‘Govt not responsible for Sanghar election suspension’

Karachi
The Sindh government said on Monday that it had nothing to do with the election commission’s decision to postpone the local government elections in the Sanghar district.
“We had neither requested, nor demanded that elections be put off in Sanghar,” provincial information Nisar Ahmed Khuhro said at a press conference in his office at the Sindh Assembly building.
“In fact, we are sad that the polls have been postponed there. We wanted elections to take place there according to schedule.”
After a clash in Daraza Sharif, Khairpur during polling in the first phase of the local government elections on October 31 wherein 12 people were killed, most of them natives of Sanghar, the election commission at a meeting on Saturday decided to postpone the poll in Sanghar scheduled to take place on November 19 in the second phase.
Now election will be held in 14 districts of Mirpurkhas, Shaheed Benazirabad, and Hyderabad divisions on November19.
The minister said there was no need to postpone the polls as the provincial government had increased its security steps to deal with any outbreak of violence.
He added that the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional Pir Pagara had also expressed his satisfaction over the provincial government’s move to form a judicial commission to probe into the Khairpur clash.
Khuhro said 51,000 police personnel and 3,700 Rangers would be deployed in the districts where the polls were taking place on election day. Besides, he added, a rapid response force would also be available to tackle any law and order situation
He said as polls in Sanghar had been postponed, the provincial government would have more security personnel at its disposal for the maintaining peace during elections.
Besides, he said, he had requested the election commission to arrange the availability of army troops as a backup force on the day of polling.

Bilawal to visit Badin
The minister said Pakistan People’s Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari would visit Badin on Tuesday (today) for the party’s election campaign.
He hoped that the people of Badin would give an overwhelming reception to the PPP chairman similar to way the residents of Sujawal, Thatta, and Mithi had greeted him.
He said neither the provincial government’s resources were being used, nor donations from party supporters collected for the running PPP’s election campaign and the expenses for the Bilawal’s visits were being borne by party leaders in the host districts.
18th Amendment
To a question, Khuhro said one of the reasons that many areas in Sindh were still backward and underdeveloped was the lack of financial resources owing to the partial granting of provincial autonomy.
He said it had taken 27 years for the concept of provincial autonomy to materialise as had been enshrined in the Constitution and work was still in progress to fully implement the division of resources as per the provisions of 18th Constitutional Amendment.
He said Sindh was yet to get its due share of resources from the federation in terms of the Employees’ Old Age Benefit Institution, the Higher Education Commission, and Zakat and Ushr funds.
He said Sindh, between July and October, had to receive Rs164 billion as per its share from the federal divisible pool. However, he added, the province was yet to receive Rs50 billion of this amount.