LG process: Wasim Akhtar submits request to contest mayor elections

Prosecution issued notices on plea of MQM's mayor-nominee who is in jail

An anti-terrorism court (ATC) issued on Thursday notices to the prosecution over a plea filed by interned Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Wasim Akhtar, seeking court's permission to visit the election commission office to file his nomination for the position of mayor.

Akhtar, a front-running mayoral candidate from the MQM, which holds majority of local bodies' seats in the city, is behind bars after his interim bail was rejected on July 19 by an ATC in a terror facilitation case. Since then, he has been arrested in 10 more cases.

His counsel, Khawaja Navid, moved an application before ATC-I judge Bashir Ahmed Khoso, pleading that his client be allowed to go to election commission office and formally submit his nomination papers and attend the oath-taking ceremony. Navid asked the judge to direct jail authorities to take his client for the said process.

The ATC-I judge, accepting the application, issued a notice to the prosecutor for Friday to submit his comments on the matter. The application was earlier filed before the anti-terrorism courts' administrative judge at the Sindh High Court, who referred it to the ATC.

According to the election commission schedule, elections for chairpersons and deputy-chairpersons of the local government councils of Sindh and the mayor and deputy mayor of Karachi will be held on August 24. Candidates can file nomination papers on August 5 and 6, and returning officers will examine the papers from August 6 to 8.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 5^th, 2016.