LAHORE, May 16: The Punjab government has declined a request by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to depute staff for supervising re-polling at 43 polling stations of Karachi’s NA-250 constituency on the grounds that this will create bad blood for the province.

Elections at these polling stations could not be held on May 11 because of violence and allegations of rigging or mismanagement.

Official sources said on Thursday that the ECP’s request was found to be illegal and unconstitutional.

The Law Department had maintained that returning officer could summon staff from anywhere in the country for conducting an election. But this plea was not accepted.

It was found that elections in a province could only be supervised by the local staff. The government officials of a province could serve in another province on deputation but this rule can not be applied for conducting elections.

Officials said the final plea against the request was that politicians and voters in Karachi were already levelling allegations of rigging and raising objections on the victory of PML-N, and sending supervisory staff from Punjab would allow them another opportunity to blame the province for influencing the elections.

They said that the authorities concerned after con-sidering all aspects of the request sent a summary to the caretaker chief minister who then formally declined it.—Intikhab Hanif