GUJRAT: Local chapters of various opposition parties have rejected delimitations for upcoming local government elections.

Among them, the PML-Q and the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) have announced they will challenge the delimitations in courts that they claim have been done on the whims and wishes of ruling party lawmakers overlooking ground realities.

A meeting of the local chapter of the PML-Q was held at Zahoor Elahi House to review delimitation lists of the district in general and Gujrat tehsil in particular.

The meeting was attended by party officials as well as former nazims, naib nazims and councillors.

The participants unanimously rejected proposed wards and union councils, saying they believed the PML-Q had been specifically targeted to spoil chances for its candidates in the local bodies election.

Former tehsil nazim Chaudhry Saadat Nawaz Ajnala issued a statement after the meeting, saying his party had serious reservations over the delimitation that seemed to have been done by PML-N lawmakers instead of officials of the election commission. He said ground realities of locations of the proposed wards and union councils clearly indicated that it was PML-Q-specific to harm the position of the party’s potential candidates.

The meeting of JI’s consultative body in Gujrat was presided over by its District Emir Dr Tariq Salim at the Islamic Centre that discussed the proposed delimitation.

Irfan Ahmed Safi, a district naib emir of the party and former union council nazim from Lalamusa city, told Dawn the party had expressed reservations over the proposed delimitation and it seemed election commission officials did not consider natural locations and distances of areas included in the wards and union councils.

For instance, he said, areas such as Dhama and Seda Gol in Lalamusa city had been part of the Lalamusa Municipal Committee for over five decades, but both had been attached to rural union councils in the proposed delimitation.

A local lawyer commenting on the delimitations claimed that after going through proposed lists of the delimitation one could easily ascertain people had been indulged into complications so that the delimitation process would get challenged in courts to delay elections in the best interest of the ruling party.

PETROL SHORTAGE: The acute shortage of the petroleum products in Gujrat that started four days back still persists as the petroleum dealers claim that they are compelled to stop the sale at petrol stations due to the short supply of fuel by the petroleum companies.

However, reports are rife that the petrol stations have deliberately been halting the sale to earn more profit out of the shortage. Some of the dealers are allegedly selling petrol to the illegal petrol agencies who sell the petrol on exorbitant rates, especially in the rural areas of the district, and local administration has been unable to checking the stocks at the petrol stations.

DCO Liaqat Ali Chatha held an emergency meeting with the petroleum dealers association on Saturday in which the dealers were warned that they should avoid artificial shortage of the fuel or action would be taken against those responsible.

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2015

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