ECP takes notice of Sindh govt’s ad campaign

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KARACHI
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) took notice on Sunday of the Sindh government’s advertising campaign on media for the local government elections. In this regard, the ECP had issued a notification to the Sindh information secretary for violating the code of conduct.
The notification said, “Not a single political party could run a campaign through the public treasury. The Sindh government used national wealth to run advertisements on development projects on the election day”. The ECP had asked the information secretary to appear before the office of the Sindh provincial election commissioner tomorrow (Monday) to clarify the matter.
The ECP has taken notice of what it called irresponsiblet statements issued by various political leaders regarding delimitations of union councils in Karachi and Hyderabad divisions. The commission’s spokesperson, in a statement, said Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah’s statement was wrong and was tantamount to misleading the people.
“Sanaullah’s statement shows that he has little knowledge of election laws. The EC has fulfilled its constitutional and legal responsibilities.” He said the commission had been accused of using old voter lists for local government elections in Karachi and Hyderabad, terming those allegations as baseless.
The spokesman explained that the provincial government, who was bound to provide exact number of union councils, provided the numbers of UCs of each district through a notification and the ECP performed the delimitations in all districts in a transparent manner and as per the law.
He said delimitation of constituencies in Sindh had no similarity with Islamabad as in Islamabad s case, the number of UCs were increased during the election schedule only. The ECP s spokesman said the commission was ready to hold elections in Islamabad in seven to 10 days.