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Islamabad: Army troops will be on standby for deployment in sensitive areas when the country goes to polls on January 8 to elect its parliament and four provincial assemblies, a minister in the caretaker government said yesterday.
Hamid Nawaz, a retired lieutenant general heading the interior ministry, told the media that troops would be deployed if a provincial government were to make a specific request to beef up security for voters in areas designated as sensitive.
Nawaz said rangers and police would set up inner and outer security perimeters to ensure the nearly 81 million registered voters faced no difficulty at polling stations across the country.
"Army troops will be standing by for deployment, on formal request by a provincial government, wherever they are needed to assist the rangers and the police," he said.
Election Commission secretary Kunwar Mohammad Dilshad, meanwhile, said a list of normal, sensitive and extremely sensitive polling stations would be announced during the course of the week.
Poll panel stand
Dilshad, however, said the commission was not considering handing over election supervision to the army as demanded by Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairperson and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Asked about another PPP demand - that local government administrators be suspended until after the vote to prevent them from influencing the polls, Dilshad said it was not within the mandate of the chief election commissioner.
He said the election commission had received around 700 complaints regarding exploitation of government resources by contestants, interference by local government functionaries and transfers and postings of administration officials.
District returning officers had looked into the complaints, he said, and found most of them to be baseless.
Dilshad claimed that the checks had fairly contained interference by local government functionaries.
The comments came even as the PPP chairperson and Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) leader Nawaz Sharif, both former prime ministers, hit the campaign trail in Punjab.
In their addresses at public meetings, Bhutto and Sharif continued to target the former ruling party, PML-Q, over its alleged plans to manipulate the elections.
Bhutto told a gathering at Lodhran that conspiracies were being hatched to rig the polls but expressed hope that the people would foil any attempts.
She promised to improve the financial lot of the people, better employment opportunities for the youth and the empowerment of women. A PPP government, she said, would write off state loans given to small farmers.
Bhutto said her party had always spoken out against dictatorship and urged people to change the status quo through their vote.
Nawaz Sharif, addressing a rally at Rahimyar Khan, alleged that the ruling party was prepared to rig the election and warned it of a massive public backlash.
Sharif accused President Pervez Musharraf of destabilising the country and exposing the people to extreme hardship by leaving inflation unchecked while unemployment and terrorism continued to spiral during his eight years in power. He urged people to bring about a revolution through their vote.
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