Ali Zaidi seeks unconditional apology from district election commissioner

KARACHI: Federal Minister for Maritime Affairs Syed Ali Haider Zaidi on Thursday sent a defamation notice to the Election Commissioner (Karachi East) Amin Bashir, seeking an unconditional apology on the issue of expulsion during the Cantonment Board elections in Karachi on September 12.

The district Election Commissioner East on September 12 ordered the law enforcement agencies to expel Zaidi from the NA-244 Karachi East-III constituency as reported by the monitoring team constituted by the Election Commission of Pakistan for free, fair and transparent elections.

The order stated: "He [Zaidi] is creating problems [for] the voters and the code of conduct does not allow him to visit the constituency till the culmination of the election process."

However, Ali Zaidi said he was not present in the constituency during the cantonment board elections and he only visited the polling station to cast his vote. “The Election Commissioner accused me of being in the constituency. The Election Commissioner East should issue an unconditional apology within 14 days for making baseless allegations and expelling me from the constituency,” he wrote in the notice. “If the Election Commissioner East does not apologise, there will be no choice but to take legal action.”