Continued blasts lead one more candidate to seek protection

Pakistan Peoples Party’s Aziz Memon request Sindh High Court to deploy army in his constituency.

KARACHI:

The targeted attacks launched by terrorists to sabotage the election campaign have succeeded in terrorising one more candidate. Pakistan Peoples Party’s Aziz Memon, who will be contesting the elections for NA-249, has requested the Sindh High Court to grant him protection and to deploy army to ensure that the elections in his constituency were peaceful.

Memon was convening an election meeting in Lyari when a bomb blast occured in the town on Saturday. He was injured and three people died in the incident.

He is the second candidate to request for army to be deployed in his constituency. Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s Nabeel Gabol, whose constituency also falls in Lyari, made the same request earlier. “Taliban militants wanted to target Aziz but he survived,” Memon’s lawyer, Shahab Sarki, told the judges. “There is a potential threat to Memon, his polling agents and to the people voting for him,” he added. “The polling stations in his constituency might be targeted on election day.”

The bench, headed by Chief Justice Mushir Alam, issued notice to the concerned departments of the federal and provincial authorities to file their comments on the case by May 2. The petition has been tagged with the one filed by Nabeel Gabol. The judges have decided to hear both pleas together.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 1^st, 2013.