KARACHI, May 10: In view of the precarious law and order situation marked by bomb and armed attacks on candidates and election offices in Sindh, around 92,000 policemen will be deployed at 14,980 polling stations, officials told Dawn on Friday.

They said that 12,000 Rangers personnel would perform patrol duty and 27,000 soldiers were put on standby to enable 18,963,375 registered voters to cast their vote to elect 59 members of the National Assembly and 128 members of the provincial assembly on general seats on Saturday.

Polls on one seat of National Assembly and two seats of Sindh Assembly have been postponed in Karachi and Mirpurkhas owing to assassination of two candidates and death of one candidate.

In contrast to Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where it is widely believed that the PTI had made its presence felt, in Sindh the three traditional parties namely the PPP, the MQM and the PML-F dominate the electoral scene barring a few expected surprises with emergence of alliances and seat adjustment of nationalists and religious parties.

In security terms, the ANP, the MQM and the PPP suffered major setbacks as they could not run their election campaign because of bomb blasts, armed attacks and threats.

According to two senior police officers who wished not to be named, this time two new things are noteworthy.

“First, returning officers have been empowered to call Rangers or the army to meet any eventuality and secondly because of ‘active role’ of the election commission, the candidates have been made to ‘behave’ and largely the contestants followed the code of conduct,” one of the officials said.

“A year ago, it was thought that a hung parliament will emerge in forthcoming general elections, in which 20 to 25 seats would decide the future government,” said the police officer.

Thus, Karachi was targeted to get the polls postponed to provide “advantage or disadvantage” to one group or other party, the officer added.

“Initially, the issues of no-go areas and delimitations were raised. But when, nothing came out from this, bomb and armed attacks on candidates and party offices were carried out to get the polls postponed in Karachi or at least there should not be such number of seats so that the metropolis does not have any role in the forming of the future government,” said one of the police officers.

“However, we have come out from this situation and this is the single best thing happening to this country that the people are going to cast their vote to elect their representatives,” said the official.

“Now, if anyone wanted to provide advantage or disadvantage to any party or group, there is only one remaining option, that is disqualify the candidate,” added the official.

Police security plan

Meanwhile, according to the police security plan, there will be over 2,400 police mobiles that will conduct patrolling in five divisions of Sindh. One mobile patrolling will cover 10 polling stations with five fully-armed police officials.

Officials said that the ‘ineffective’ strength of Rangers would be made effective while other units of Sindh police would be deployed on election duties to overcome shortages.

The police have marked 4,176 polling stations and 5,436 polling stations the most sensitive and sensitive, respectively, on the basis of “history of violence, present political divisions, special branch and local police reports”.

In Karachi South district, a total of 503 polling stations have been declared the most sensitive and sensitive, which means not a single polling station has remained ‘normal’ in this area.

According to the police plan, out of total 1,341 polling stations in Karachi East, 618 have been declared the most sensitive, 606 sensitive while 117 are stated to be normal.

In Karachi West, out of total 2,069 polling stations, 1,165 have been declared the most sensitive, 562 sensitive and 342 normal.

Similarly, in Hyderabad, out of total 4,502 polling stations, 1,183 have been declared the most sensitive.

The police believe that out of total 2,086 polling stations, 250 are the most sensitive in Mirpurkhas.

In Sukkur division, 421 polling stations have been termed the most sensitive out of 2,236 polling stations.

In Larkana, the police believe that 339 polling stations are the most sensitive out of 2,147 polling stations.

The police have also prepared a ‘post-election plan’.

According to this plan, the police force will be withdrawn from the election commission staff duty only after ‘due consultation’, while the deployment or redeployment will be made in view of tensions between the contesting parties and complaints between the parties over outcome of election results.

The police will remain standby in case of any major conflict arise between parties or any sudden break down of law and order.