A large number of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) workers and local leaders staged a protest outside Karachi Press Club against ‘engineering’ of elections on Thursday. The protesters held placards inscribed with slogans against the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and chanted against ‘engineering’ of elections. Former Sindh Assembly deputy speaker Shahla Raza also addressed the protestors on the occasion. She alleged that administration and other forces had engineered polls in city and elsewhere in the country in order to keep mainstream political parties away from the parliament. She also claimed that PPP’s polling agents were not provided Form 45. “Our polling agents were compelled to vacate polling booths and stations,” she said, adding that the Lyari election was rigged. Saeed Ghani, a losing candidate of Provincial Assembly Sindh seat (PS-89) while criticizing civil administration and ECP said that it why incomprehensible why Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s victory was announced only two hours after the polling time ended. “Establishment, loyal to foreign lobbies, tried to smear results in order to keep away mainstream political parties out of houses,” said Saeed Ghani. Yousuf Baloch, local party leader while condemning the conspiracies hatched by administration and other forces said, “Our party Chairman, Bilawal Bhutto has been thrown away from Lyari seat. This is simply unacceptable.” Yousuf Baloch added that steps against democracy could not be tolerated at any cost. ” Our party would keep continued its struggle democracy in the country,” he added. Meanwhile, losing candidate of National Assembly seat NA-245, Tariq Nazeer of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), in a written letter to ECP, complained that Form-45 had not been given to his polling agent by election staff. He also expressed his reservations over losing his seat. Published in Daily Times, July 27th 2018.