PTI calls for immediate deployment of rangers

Sarwar lashes out at police, calls it silent spectator

LAHORE:

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) on Tuesday called for rangers to be immediately deployed in NA-122 following the killing of one of the party’s UC candidates.

Provincial organiser Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar raised the demand at an emergency press conference convened after it was confirmed that the body of Mian Muhammad Akbar, the party’s candidate for UC-88 general councillor, had been found lying in Garden Town area late on Monday. Chaudhry Ghaffar Dogar, another PTI UC candidate, had been earlier killed in September.



Rapping the police, Sarwar said it had failed to effectively discharge its duties ahead of by-polls in NA-122. He said PTI workers and candidates were being victimised by hoodlums affiliated with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). The former governor said police had been essaying the role of a silent spectator in this case. “We want rangers to be deployed in the constituency in the run-up to elections on October 11,” Sarwar said.

Warning the PML-N against resort to violence, he said maintaining order was a responsibility of the government and law enforcement agencies.

Sarwar said the party had been desisting from getting mired in a confrontation with the PML-N due to the forthcoming elections. “We would have responded to their threats were the elections not scheduled for this Sunday,” the former governor said.

The former governor also accused the PML-N of orchestrating an attack on his convoy on Monday in Samanabad area. He said police had identified a certain Salahuddin who had been behind attacks on the convoy in Nawab Town area. Sarwar said police had established that the man in question was contesting the LG polls from the PML-N platform.

Meanwhile, the PTI and its 20 political allies expressed their distrust in police and district administration and demanded that rangers be tasked with maintaining order in NA-122 and PP-147. Sarwar discussed the prevailing law and order situation with representatives of the party’s allies including Jamaat-i-Islami Lahore amir Mian Maqsood Ahmad and Sunni Ittehad Council head Sahibzada Hamid Raza. Those present on the occasion unanimously called for rangers to be entrusted with the duty of securing constituencies where by-polls were to be conducted.

Ahmad and Raza said it was government’s responsibility to maintain order. They said every Pakistani had the right to ask the paramilitary and the army for security if those in power themselves started flouting the law.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 7^th, 2015.