Cantonment boards to accept nomination papers till Tuesday

The elections will be held under the Military Land Act and are scheduled for April 25

KARACHI: Eight of Sindh’s cantonment boards and their returning officers have started receiving papers for the upcoming local government elections.

Sunday was the first day to submit nomination papers and the process will continue till Tuesday. “Sindh’s cantonment board elections — Karachi, Clifton, Faisal, Malir, Korangi, Manora, Sukkur and Hyderabad — are scheduled to be held on April 25,” said Tanweer Zaki, the acting provincial election commissioner.

The returning officers for the Cantonment Board Clifton (CBC) are Shahrome Safdar Khattak and Syeda Imammah Ali. Asif Amir Khan and Adil Rafi Siddiqui will look after Cantonment Board Faisal (CBF) and Karachi Cantonment’s returning officer is Abdul Wahab with Muhammad Hayyat Mehar for Manora, Muhammad Farooq for Malir and Abdul Latif Marri for Korangi Creek Cantonment.

According to the schedule, nomination papers will be scrutinised from April 2 to April 4 and candidates can appeal for rejection or against acceptance of their papers till April 4. The final candidates’ list will be made public by April 11 and polling will take place on April 25.

The cantonment boards’ elections are being held under the Military Land Act. According to this act, voters will elect members for the board through a general seat election and then these general members will elect two more members for the minority and womens’ seat.

Since the CBC is classified as category ‘A’, the election will be held for 10 general seats. Then these 10 members will select a member for the minority and women’s seat to bring the total to 12 elected members. All category ‘A’ boards will be headed by a sitting station commander or a serving brigadier and the number of nominated members will be equal to the number of civil members or elected members while the 25th member of the board will be the president.

In category ‘B’, the number of total civil members will be seven — five on general seats and two on reserved seats. In category ‘C’, there will be five elected members — three on general seats and two on reserve seats. In Manora and Korangi, the general elections will be held on two seats as they fall in category ‘D’.

CBC and CBF are category ‘A’ where registered voters are more than 0.1 million. The Karachi Cantonment Board is category ‘B’ where the registered voters are less than 0.1 million.

According to the spokesperson of the CBC, Amir Arab Ali, a total of 54 nomination papers were submitted on Monday while four were submitted on Sunday. He added that the process will continue till Tuesday (today).

Published in THe Express Tribune, March 31^st, 2015.