ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani religious party, which secured second place in the recent local government polls in Karachi, said on Thursday it had shared its reservations over election irregularities with the provincial administration of Sindh and was hopeful that its grievances would be addressed.
The local polls were dominated by Sindh’s ruling Pakistan People Party (PPP) and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) faction after they won from 93 and 86 administrative units of the city, respectively, though no party could win enough seats in the election to install a mayor on its own.
The JI, thus, emerged as a key player in the process, with the PPP and former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party with 40 seats trying to get into an alliance with it to secure the coveted position in the country’s most densely populated city.
However, the JI expressed grievances over the conduct of elections while accusing the PPP of depriving it of several seats.
“We have already shared our complaints with the election commission over what happened on the voting day,” the party’s top leader in Sindh, Hafiz Naeem-ur-Rehman, said while addressing a news conference. “We faced problems with the release of Forms 11 and 12 and the results were also changed.”
Rehman issued the statement after meeting a PPP delegation that went to his office to discuss JI’s grievances and convince its leadership to form an alliance ahead of the mayoral race.
“We have shared our reservations with our friends from the Pakistan People Party,” he continued. “We hope they will take care of it and things will get resolved. We will wait and see. If things get better, we will continue this conservation.”
Saeed Ghani, a senior PPP leader who lead the delegation, told reporters the polling process was supervised by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), though he added that his party would see how it might help address JI’s grievances.
“We have been saying this that the Pakistan Peoples Party and Jamaat-e-Islami should work together on the local government level,” he said. “It will be a good opportunity for this city, its residents and local government institutions if two mature political parties join hands to fix the problems faced by Karachi.”
The ECP has already decided to look into the complaints filed by the JI next week.
Ghani said his party would accept whatever was decided by the top election authority of the country.
This was the first formal meeting between the two parties after the local government polls in the city, though it remained inconclusive since they could not agree on who would be the next mayor of Karachi.
