ISLAMABAD: Welcoming the Jamaat-iIslami`s initiative to hold a multiparty conference (MPC) on election reforms, former president Asif Ali Zardari on Friday said that consensus should be reached on reforms ahead of the next polls to make transfer of power credible.

He said this during a meeting with JI chief Senator Sirajul Haq when the latter called on him and invited the PPP to the JI conference to be held in Mansoora, Lahore.

PPP leader Senator Rehman Malik and JI leaders Mian Muhammad Aslam and Asif Luqman Qazi also attended the meeting.

`Manipulated power transfer lies at the root of political instability in the country,` Mr Zardari said while emphasising that elections `would serve no purpose without consensus on electoral reforms ahead of elections`.

He said that reformed election laws must also provide for punishment to returning officers involved in election rigging, a mechanism for arriving at a consensus in the setting up of caretaker governments at federal and provincial levels and the right to vote to overseas Pakistanis.

The PPP leader said that innumerable instances had been reponed which pointed involvement of election officers in malpractices and fraud but there was no mechanism to punish them.

The former president said that the PPP had conducted a research on poll rigging in some constituencies in Punjab which it was ready to share with political parties. He said that the PPP had accepted results of 2013 general elections, despite having serious reservations, only for the sake of continuity of democracy.