The PML-N and PPP have locked horns over allegations of vote buying against each other while the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) awaits the Punjab government’s report on the alleged incident that took place in Lahore on Saturday.
Tensions between both the mainstream parties intensified when the PML-N candidate for NA-127 Attaullah Tarar, who is facing PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari in the Lahore constituency, stormed PPP’s election office and caught three people allegedly collecting CNICs of the voters after paying them cash and taking oath of allegiance from them.
The PPP alleged that ‘the PML-N goons’ led by Mr Tarar had kidnapped its workers while PML-N said it handed over three PPP supporters to the Kot Lakhpat police.
Mr Tarar uploaded to the social media video clips of his ‘raid’ on the PPP office and also handed them over to the ECP as evidence while the PPP also uploaded a clip in which some masked men were seen buying votes at an election office of PML-N.
PPP election cell in-charge Senator Taj Haider has also written to the ECP to take notice of Mr Tarar’s ‘hooliganism’ at the party office and disqualify him for the polls. The letter stated that when Mr Tarar, accompanied by “over 300 goons” forcibly entered the office of the PPP candidate from PP-160 Mian Misbahur Rehman in Lahore, the latter was engaged in campaign activities and polling agents were being mobilised for an upcoming training session.
The letter questioned why Punjab Police personnel were assisting Mr Tarar and his men during the incursion.
The PPP also alleged that it was not an isolated incident as its candidates were being harassed and intimidated across Punjab and police were complicit in it.
At two separate press conferences, PPP leaders, including Shehla Reza, Sehar Kamran, Zulfikar Ali Bader, Barrister Amir Hassan and Aslam Gill, asked under what law Mr Tarar entered their party office and kidnapped three PPP workers.
They alleged that Tarar and allies also took away precious cell phones and some jewellery from there. It was a robbery at gunpoint, they added.
The PPP leaders claimed that their party workers were preparing voter slips when the incident took place. Urging Nawaz Sharif and Shehbaz Sharif to take notice of the incident and tender apologies, they warned that next time the PML-N would find them prepared to counter any such attack.
They regretted that the police were not registering the FIR of the incident and warned of a protest if the police did not take action at the earliest.
PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif said at a presser earlier in the day that if vote-buying allegations were true, it’s the worst insult of the right to franchise.
