Months after being banned by the government, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) fields 84 candidates in 17 of the 41 cantonments, reports Dawn.
Polling will be held on Sunday (tomorrow) to elect general members of the Cantonment Boards.
A list of candidates of all the 219 wards shows that the ultra-rightwing TLP has fielded the largest number of 57 candidates in nine cantonments of Punjab, followed by 24 in six cantonments of Sindh and three candidates in two cantonments of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The party, however, has not fielded any candidate in any of the nine wards of the three cantonments in Balochistan.
Federal Minister for Information Fawad Chaudhry, while speaking to Dawn, said that only the Supreme Court had the authority to disqualify a political party from contesting the elections.
He was of the opinion that the ban placed on the TLP was an administrative step. “There are two phases — one is administrative and the other is judicial. Until the judicial phase is not complete, the party cannot be stopped from participating in the elections,” explained Fawad.
However, the minister criticised the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for not holding any investigations to find TLP’s source of funding when the commission was swift enough to check the accounts of ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and the two major Opposition parties.
