ECP to take notice of violation during election campaign:Syed Waqas Jafri

Lahore: Jamaat e Islami’s deputy Secretary General, Syed Waqas Jafri, In charge, JI’s central election campaign, has called upon the Chief Election Commissioner to take notice of the heavy amounts being spent by some political parties on their election campaign in violation of the Code of Conduct issued by the ECP.

In a letter to the CEC, he said that the Election Commission had fixed the limit of Rs. 15,00,000 ( fifteen lakh ) for a National Assembly candidate and Rs. 10,00,000 (One million) for a Provincial Assembly candidate. However, the PML(N), the PPPP and the PTI were blatantly violating this restriction on expenses on their election campaigns, as they were spending huge amounts of money on their campaign through the electronic and print media. According to a conservative estimate, these parties were spending almost Rs. 5000 million each day on electronic and print media, he added.

The JI central leader pointed out that a report on BBC Urdu website also raised questions about the relevance of the declared assets of the political parties against their expenses on the election campaign. According to the report, the spending of the political parties on the election campaign was disproportionate to their declared assets, as in some cases, even one day media campaign could wipe out the entire declared assets of the party, he added.

The JI leader said that these violations were not only tantamount to pre poll rigging by the resourceful office bearers of these parties but also raised serious questions on the integrity of the electoral process. Besides, these parties had put the law abiding political parties adhering to the ECP code of conduct, at a disadvantage, he added.

The JI leader urged the ECP to order these parties to stop this high expenditure on election campaign especially on electronic and print media, in excess of the prescribed limit .