By-elections for vacant local government seats in Sindh to be held on Nov 5

The by-elections on the vacant local government seats across Sindh will be held on November 5. The schedule for the by-elections in Sindh was announced by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Monday. A total of 886 vacant seats of general member, chairman and vice chairman will be filled across the province after the by-polls.

The ECP has also announced the schedule for by-elections to fill the reserved local government seats that have fallen vacant.

The by-elections will also decide the fate of Karachi Mayor Murtaza Wahab as he has to be elected to the municipality in six months after taking the oath, as per the law. Wahab had not contested the local government elections and he became the mayor by an amendment made to the Sindh local government law that allowed unelected persons to contest the mayoral election on condition that if they became the mayor, they had to be elected to the municipality in six months.

The by-polls for direct local government seats on November 5 would be held in Jacobabad, Kashmore, Shikarpur, Larkana, Sukkur, Ghotki, Khairpur, Shaheed Benazirabad, Naushero Feroz, Sanghar, Mirpurkhas, Umerkot, Tharparkar, Tando Allahyar, Hyderabad, Jamshoro, Thatta and four districts of Karachi —Malir, South, Central and Keamari.

The ECP has called upon the electors of respective local councils and wards of the relevant districts to elect their representatives on the polling day.

In a notification, the commission informed all the executive authorities of the federal and provincial services that they could neither announce any new development project nor use state resources in the local government elections as doing so could influence the elections in favour of a particular candidate.

The ECP also warned that if any person in a government service misused their official position in any manner in order to influence results of the elections, they would be liable to face the music.

The commission also clarified that in the divisions where the election schedule has been issued, no transfer and postings of government officers and officials, including those of autonomous bodies, would be made without prior approval of the ECP till the publication of election results.

In addition to that, the election officials, including district returning officers (DRO), returning officers (RO) and assistant returning officers for the local government by-polls, would not be transferred till the culmination of the election process.

The offices of the DROs and ROs would remain open on all public holidays, including Sunday.

Schedule

According to the schedule, the ECP will issue a public notice for the by-polls on October 2, after which candidates will be able to file nomination papers at RO offices from October 5 till 7.

The scrutiny of nominations will take place on October 9 and valid nominations will be announced on October 12.

Appeals against approval or rejection of nomination papers will heard from October 16 to 18 and decision on the appeals will be announced on October 19.

The revised list of candidates will be displayed on October 20, and candidates will be allowed to withdraw their candidature on October 21.

The ECP will allot election symbols to the candidates on October 22. The polling will take place on November 5 and within three days after the polling, official results will be announced.

Karachi division

In the Karachi division, local government by-polls will be held in District Malir, District South, District Central and District Keamari.

For two seats, by-elections will be held because the local government elections could not be held there due to the demise of candidates. The rest of the seats fell vacant because returning candidates on them were elected on the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s tickets but they later resigned after differences occurred within the party.

By-polls will be conducted in four Town Municipal Corporations (TMC) of District Malir. In Union Committee (UC) 1, Ward-4, of the Gadap TMC, the by-poll will be held to fill the vacant seat of general member. In the UC-7 of the same town, the seat of chairman is vacant.

In UC-8 of the Ibrahim Hyderi TMC, voters will elect their chairman, whereas, in the Ward 3 of the Malir TMC’s UC-2, the general member will be elected.

In District South, the by-election will be held in the UC-12 Boat Basin of the Saddar TMC for the seat of the vice chairman while in the UC-13 of the same town, voters will elect the chairman.

In District Central, the general member will be elected in the Ward-3 of the UC-5 Rizvia Society of the Nazimabad TMC. In District Keamari’s UC-3, Mauripur TMC, voters will elect their chairman.