JUI-F rejects Sindh LG polls’ results

KARACHI: Rejecting the results of the first phase of the local government elections in Sindh, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl’s provincial leadership on Friday said they would convene their provincial body’s meeting on July 6 in Hyderabad to devise a strategy against the alleged rigging carried out by the PPP-led provincial government.

“The JUI-F was expecting that PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari will take notice of the party’s concerns and seek replies from his party’s provincial government,” said Allama Rashid Mehmood Soomro, the JUI-F Sindh’s secretary general. “But, he (Bilawal) supported the irregularities committed by the Sindh government on the assembly’s floor.”

Soomro said to put pressure, the Sindh government had registered fake FIRs against over 150 leaders and workers of the JUI-F that included serious provisions of terrorism in some cases. “Over 150 workers have been injured at various places,” he claimed.

“Instead of using the government’s machinery and police force for stamping the ballots in the LG polls, it would have been better for the PPP to issue a notification and get its candidates nominated,” he said.

He said the PPP had passed the local government bill of its own choice in the Sindh Assembly on the basis of recently conducted delimitation of the constituencies.

Soomro asked Bilawal to form a parliamentary committee on the irregularities in the LG elections, and conduct re-polling on merely two union councils in each districts as a test. “If the JUI-F failed to prove the PPP’s rigging in the local government elections, we would accept all the results and apologise to you,” he said. “Since Pakistan’s creation, a conspiracy has been hatched to limit the JUI-F to two provinces only,” he said.