ISLAMABAD, Nov 26: Pakistan People’s Party chairperson Benazir Bhutto has demanded that transfers of judges notified after the announcement of the election schedule should be reversed and measures should be taken to ensure free, fair, transparent and impartial elections.

In a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Justice (retd) Qazi Muhammad Farooq, she sought information about the total number of ballot boxes imported by the Election Commission.

She suggested that each constituency of the national and provincial assembly should be allotted a specific number of ballot boxes and this should be put on the EC website. Each box should be numbered and may also be marked separately for male and female polling station.

Ms Bhutto said a specific tag attached to each box should be signed before and after the polling with a time stamp by returning officers, polling agents and the candidate or his principal agent. The tags should be laminated immediately after the signing to prevent any tampering.

She said ballot boxes should carry etched numbers on them because they were made of plastic and there should be no problem to etch the NA or provincial constituency number and the number of the box. She was of the view that the colour of boxes must be the same throughout the country or at least for each province.

Ms Bhutto said ballots were to be passed by the Election Commission to registrars to the District Returning Officer who would be a sessions judge. He has one night to re-distribute them to returning officers. “We have reports that at this stage 25,000 ballots will be given to a list provided by the regime for National Assembly candidates and additional each for provincial assembly candidates.”

“While the figure of other provinces is not with us, we have information that 108 NA candidates of ‘Q’ each will be given these ballots. This must be stopped if the constitutional right to free elections is to be respected,” she asserted.

She cited news reports saying that large-scale reshuffling of session judges, additional district and session judges, magistrates and civil judges had taken place since the announcement of the election schedule.

Registrars of the Sindh High Court and the Lahore High Court have been changed, perhaps also in Balochistan and the NWFP. She stressed that this was against election laws and urged the CEC to reverse the postings until after the elections.

The Secretary of the Election Commission, Kanwar Dilshad, could not be contacted for comments on Ms Bhutto’s demands.

Meanwhile, PPP Information Secretary Sherry Rehman in a statement issued here on Monday said the judges were being transferred to influence the results of the elections. “The regime intends to pressurise and coerce the judges to put their seal of approval on the desired results,” she alleged. “According to the list being compiled by the PPP, judges have been transferred from various parts of Sindh, including Shikarpur, Dadu, Maher, Umerkot, Hyderabad and Tando Mohammad Khan, to name a few areas.”