LG Poll Karachi: Govt Inform ECP that Police Not Available for 3 Month

Sindh govt cites PTI long march, flood duty, and COVID-19 vaccination.

On October 28, the ECP asked the Sindh government for a report on the viability of holding LG polls in the Karachi division, The provincial government informed the election body that “IG police has again communicated the shortage of police in Karachi Division as more human resources will be required to conduct the elections as per the scale of deployment of 8 and 4 personnel per most sensitive and sensitive polling stations respectively.”

The letter stated that “Police from other districts are still not available due to flood duty for at least three months.”
The provincial administration informed the ECP that the IG Islamabad has been given access to 5,000 Sindh police officers to maintain peace and order during the PTI-long march.

According to the Sindh government, police also participated in the COVID-19 Pediatric Vaccination Comparison and the 11th International Defense Exhibition and Seminar (IDEAS-2022).

A day earlier, the Sindh police informed the additional chief secretary that the Karachi Range had envisioned the deployment of 37,523 police officers, out of which 17760 had to be arranged from other Sindh police units and a reserve of 7150 was planned to be raised from auxiliaries to meet the shortfall in accordance with the scale provided by the Election Commission, but at the moment we can only muster 5012 police officers from all available resources.

“Police from local resources, but the huge manpower gap for Local Govt Elections phase 2 cannot be filled without the deployment of the police force from other Sindh districts” (police from other districts of Sindh are unavailable due to floods for at least 3 months).

Karachi needs 17,760 more police officers.

The Karachi police, however, believed that 4,995 voting locations would be set up during the upcoming local body elections in the city (1,307 designated as most sensitive and 3,688 as sensitive). There will be 25,208 police officers working these polling places in total.

“Election-related responsibilities will be performed by 19763 members of the Karachi police force. The proposed deployment will require an additional 17,760 police officers, the additional inspector general of Karachi police informed the IG Sindh.