KARACHI: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) once again postponed on Wednesday the local government elections in whole Sanghar and parts of Badin district, scheduled to be held on Thursday (today), on a request of the Sindh government, which said security conditions in the two districts were not conducive to polling.

A notification issued by the ECP said: `On the request of Government of Sindh about prevailing law & order situation in Sanghar and Badin district, the Election Commission of Pakistan hereby rescinds its notincationdated Dec 9 pertains to district Sanghar and notification dated Dec 10 to the extent of Badin and Sanghar districts pertaining to the poll of local government elections scheduled to be held on 17.12.2015`.

The first notification had announced the schedule for LG elections in Sanghar on Dec 17, while another issued the following day included town committee Talhar and three union councils for Dec 17 elections, where polling had been postponed for reasons ranging from delimitations to the law and order situation.

The notification said a fresh date for the elections would be fixed after `visible improvement` in the law and order situa-tion in the two districts.

Violent incidents in Sanghar involving activists of the Pakistan People`s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim LeagueFunctional (PML-F) on Tuesday left four people, including two guards of a PPP lawmalcer, dead and six others wounded.

Soon after the incident, the provincial government, ruled by the PPP, submitted an application to the ECP asking it to postpone the polls, citing a fragile security situation in the two districts.

Sanghar and Badin were among the Sindh districts which were charted for the second phase of the LG elections. However, the ECP postponed the elections in Sanghar aday before the polls last month on apprehensions ofpoliticalclashes there.

There was a fear of revenge for the Khairpur tragedy in which eight of the 11 people killed during violence in the first phase of LG polls belonged to Sanghar.

Similarly, parts of Badin districts could not go to the polls over issues of delimitation and violence.

So, the lowest tier of governance in Sindh will remain incomplete until the LG polls are held in Sanghar and in 81 union councils, including five in Sanghar, which had been put off following a last-minute order of the Sindh High Court seeking a fresh delimitation of wards.

In the second phase of the LG elections in Sindh, 2,571 of the 7,098 polling stations had been declared highly sensitive and the same number sensitive. The situation in Sanghar was so alarming that about 450 of the 614 polling stations had been declared highly sensitive and many others sensitive.

A minister in the provincial government asserted that the PPP was not afraid of elections in Sanghar and Badin, and the government`s decision to defer the polls there was aimed at saving `precious lives`, which were in danger because of the charged atmosphere there.

`The violence just a couple of days before the polling, whichkilled and wounded a dozen people, warranted a better strategy, he said. `We are not afraid of elections. we have swept elections already that shows the people have still faith in our party`.

Reaction Former National Assembly speaker Dr Fehmida Mirza and her husband, Dr Zulifikar Mirza, criticised the Sindh government`s `ploy` to approach the E CP for the postponement of the LG polls in Badin and Sanghar districts.

They said the government was `terrified of its failure` that led it to ask the ECP to postpone the polls in Badin and Sanghar.

A leader of the PML-F, Nasir Khan Nizamani, also criticised the Sindh government for asking the ECP to put off the elections in the two districts.