Weeks after ban, Tehreek-e-Labbaik party contests crucial Karachi by-election

KARACHI: Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a religious political party banned by the Pakistan government over violent nationwide protests this month, is contesting a crucial by-election seat in the country’s financial hub of Karachi today, Thursday, with the interior ministry saying the group could contest polls until such time that it stood dissolved as a registered political party.
Earlier this month, Pakistan’s federal cabinet approved the interior ministry’s recommendation to outlaw the TLP, saying the government would take the case to the Supreme Court to ensure the dissolution of the party.
Legally, after banning a political party, the government is required to refer the matter to the Supreme Court within fifteen days of making the declaration of the ban while presenting its reasons for doing so. The party would stand dissolved and cease to be a registered political party if the apex court upheld the government’s declaration.
The government had moved to ban the right-wing group after demonstrations by TLP supporters erupted in major Pakistani cities and quickly turned violent on April 12 following the arrest in Lahore of party chief Saad Rizvi for threatening the government with rallies if it did not expel the French envoy to Islamabad over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) published in France last year. Six policemen were killed and over 800 injured, according to official figures, in protests that lasted a week.
In a message released by the Lahore media cell of the banned party on April 28, the TLP said its rallies in NA-259, the seat for which the by-election is being held, had “deprived political opponents of sleep.” On social media, supporters of the party pushed the hashtag #NA249_TLP_Ka.
Speaking to Arab News, NA-249 presiding officer Syed Nadeem Haider Jafri said the Election Commission of Pakistan had not yet placed a bar on the TLP from running in elections because it was still a “registered political party.”
Ali Nawaz Malik, a spokesperson for the ministry of interior spokesman, said TLP had been proscribed by the government of Pakistan with effect from April 15, 2021, and “it is entirely up to the Election Commission of Pakistan to see whether the TLP candidate can contest the election in NA 249.”
“The Proscribed TLP has 30 days from the date of ban to file a review under Section 11(C) of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) 1997,” Malik said. “The government would review the status of TLP once the application is received. Till date, TLP hasn’t filed any review with the ministry of Interior.”
Barrister Salahuddin Ahmed, president of the Sindh High Court Bar Association, said TLP should have not been allowed to contest.
“I don’t see how an organization that is proscribed under the ATA can contest elections even if not yet dissolved by ECP,” he told Arab News.
Ahmed said under the ATA, all of TLP’s offices must be sealed and bank accounts frozen: “All publications, posters, banners, literature (physical or digital) etc. on its behalf are banned and so are any public meetings, press conferences or any dissemination of their views/statements.”
“They cannot raise money and any person who belongs or professes to belong to them [TLP] commits a criminal offense,” the barrister said. “So, how will their candidate say he is a TLP candidate?”
But TLP’s candidate Nazeer Ahmed said he was “hopeful” despite the fact that the party couldn’t run its campaign properly in recent weeks. 
“We couldn’t run the campaign so well because we were declared a terrorist origination and our workers are afraid but there was no hurdle from the election commission which told us that there will be no bars if we run our campaign according to the ECP’s rules,” Ahmed told Arab News. “We have a strong vote base here and despite the fact that our workers didn’t come out the way they did in general elections, but our silent voters are intact and will vote for us.”
In the 2018 elections, TLP managed to win two seats in the Sindh Assembly from Karachi and got a female member elected on a reserved seat of the assembly.