LANDI KOTAL, May 8: Some wealthy candidates for the two national assembly seats from Khyber Agency are reportedly using money to sway local residents to vote for them.

It is learnt that an independent candidate has arranged 20 buses to take some 1,500 local voters currently living in Karachi to their respective localities in Jamrud and Landi Kotal areas and back.

An insider said similar arrangements had been made for hundreds of voters attached with transport business in Punjab and that the candidate had given return air tickets from Karachi to Peshawar to close friends and business partners for voting for him in their respective constituencies.

“My vote is registered in Peshawar but I am a permanent resident of Landi Kotal. We (three business partners) have been provided with return air tickets by the Karachi-based campaign manager of an independent candidate,” said Habib Gul, a transporter from the port city.

Hatam Khan, a house and kitchenware dealer in Shah Alam Market of Lahore, said an independent candidate contacted his son and asked for his original computerised national identity card along with a ‘solemn pledge’ to vote for him so that he could be paid Rs5,000 each along with two-way bus ticket between Landi Kotal and Lahore.

Hatam Khan, however, said he declined the offer.

Arranging lavish feasts and entertaining visitors at their respective election offices in Jamrud and Landi Kotal by NA-45 candidates and on Peshawar’s Ring Road by NA-46 contestants are a common sight.

Shoaib, a physically-challenged displaced person from Bara, who lives in Jalozai camp, said election campaign managers of some independent candidates from the Khyber Agency’s tehsil were distributing money among the ‘needy’ internally displaced persons in the name of charity during tent-to-tent campaign in Jalozai camp.

“The amount of the money depends on the size of a family and the influence of the money recipient on members of his family,” he said.

He, however, declined to disclose whom his family would vote for and how much money had been offered to it.

Another way to buy loyalties of transporters is getting written off the loans they owe to the persons from whom they have purchased their vehicles in installments.

Some candidates have arranged free medical treatment, dowries for brides, provision of a power transformer, sinking of tube wells and installation of solar systems, and repair and alteration of houses of voters.

Sources both in Bara and Landi Kotal said the government employees, especially government schoolteachers, were exploiting the situation to their benefit.

“An open auction of loyalties of teachers from Bara tehsil was held under the supervision of an official of the education department to secure support for an independent candidate,” a local teacher said.

He said the bidding began at Rs3,000 for a vote and ended at Rs15,000.

The teacher said the independent candidate had promised to pay Rs15,000 to every government schoolteacher for voting for him.

He said teachers attended the candidate’s election meetings in large numbers.

When contacted, an official of the local administration said no action could be taken until a written complaint about violation of the ECP code of conduct reached his office.

He said his office had received no such complaint as yet.