KARACHI: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Tuesday rejected the Sindh government’s plea for further postponement of the local body elections in Karachi.
The local body elections in the Hyderabad and Karachi divisions were requested to be postponed for three months by the Sindh government in a letter to the ECP a day earlier.
On October 23, Karachi will hold the local body elections.
The election board responded by stating that it is up to the provincial administration and law enforcement to keep the peace during the voting process.
The provincial government was instructed by the ECP to maintain police presence during the poll in the port city.
In its request to the ECP, Sindh’s Home Ministry included a letter from the Inspector-General of Police Sindh, Ghulam Nabi Memon, stating that the police force will need to be organized from the district and rural Sindh, along with auxiliaries to make up the shortfall, as it is currently involved in flood relief operations and maintaining law and order due to damaged infrastructure throughout the province.
For the local government elections in the Karachi and Hyderabad divisions, the Sindh Police suggested that it would not be able to guarantee the deployment of people and necessary assistance.
According to the scales provided by the election commission, Karachi planned to deploy 39,293 police officers for the local body election, of which 14,958 had to come from interior Sindh districts. A reserve of 7,150 police officers was also planned to be raised from auxiliaries to make up the difference.
With all of its resources, Sindh Police claimed that it could only manage a small number of people, and that this was only conceivable if the whole Karachi police force, which had been stationed in flood-affected districts, was called back to work.
