LARKANA: The authorities deployed 4,000 policemen and 400 Rangers personnel to provide security for local bodies’ polls in Larkana district, where over 1300 candidates of PPP, anti-PPP and independents contested local bodies election for 420 seats of Larkana district on Sunday. The seats comprised 46 union councils, two municipal corporations and four town committees, including 20 union committees of the four municipal town committees of Larkana.

A total of 712 polling stations were set up in the district where 2165 polling booths were established by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for the local bodies polls. The ECP had declared 270 polling stations in Larkana district extremely sensitive, 120 sensitive and 321 normal. Additional personnel were deployed in the city of Larkana at sensitive polling stations besides installing CCTV cameras at highly sensitive and sensitive polling stations.

A special control room was also set up in the SSP office to monitor the security of local bodies’ polls. SSP Larkana Sarfraz Nawaz Shaikh and Rangers patrolled around the city and polling stations to review the voting process at the polling stations and see the security arrangements. Speaking on the occasion, the SSP said that he was visiting one of the polling stations in the district where a large number of personnel were deployed at the most sensitive and sensitive polling stations.

Meanwhile, JUI-Fazal provincial Secretary General Allama Rashid Mahmood Soomro said in a statement that ECP had failed to fulfill its responsibilities of conducting free, fair and transparent elections in Sindh’s four divisions in the first phase as municipal elections in the province remained filled with riots, bloodshed and rigging incidents. He said that JUI-F candidates and activists were tortured in worst violence while the police remained silent spectators. He said ECP also failed to prevent pre-election and polling day fraud and violence.