Sir: It is regrettable that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is not willing to take action to address the reports that, during the May 11 general elections, women were barred from casting their votes in several parts of the country under religious, tribal or cultural taboos. As per the Free and Fair Election Network’s (FAFEN) report, this menace of pre-poll rigging was not limited to several districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province but even a place like central Punjab was no exception. The lame excuse put forward by the ECP was that they could not intervene unless approached by an aggrieved (read political) party. We all now know what happened in the upper and lower Dir districts wherein all the active political and religious parties agreed to prevent women from casting their votes on May 11. At least two written, signed off agreements concerning two provincial assembly constituencies have surfaced while polling stations data from other constituencies present the same conclusion. How could there have been an aggrieved party to lodge a complaint against this pre-poll rigging when everyone has already signed these unholy agreements? We wonder why, even after the hue and cry made in the media, the ECP and superior courts are not interested in taking action. Zahid Khan of the ANP blames the establishment for articulating the elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in favour of the right-wing parties: the PTI and JI. Can we presume the same for the ECP and superior courts? Just for the sake of the record, FAFEN has reported this type of pre-poll rigging in Khanewal, Faisalabad, Sahiwal, Kasur, upper and lower Dir, Peshawar, Buner, Kohat and North Waziristan. MASOOD KHAN Jubail, Saudi Arabia