ECP asks political parties, contesting candidates to follow code of conduct

ISLAMABAD: Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Monday asked the political parties and contesting candidates to remove their banners, panaflex and signboards voluntarily exceeding the approved size specified by commission.

A spokesman of the ECP while talking to APP directed the political parties to cooperate with the district administration and abide by the election rules.

To a question he said, “The ECP's District Monitoring Teams are in action and have started removing posters and banners violating the approved size under the polls code”.

He said that the District Monitoring has fined Rana Amir Shahzad an amount of Rs 50,000, the candidate contesting election from NA 147 for taking out a rally without informing the district administration and also committing aerial firing in the rally.

ECP monitoring team in Rawalpindi district had also removed illegal publicity material from nearly 140 points.

To another question, he said the ECP had appointed as many as 592 monitoring teams throughout the country to monitor election campaign.

He said that 99, 297, 130, 51, 12 and 3 teams have been constituted in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, FATA and federal capital respectively to monitor election campaigns of the candidates both for the national and provincial assemblies.

“These teams will monitor election campaigns of candidates and political parties to ensure strict compliance of the code of conduct,” he added.

He said that the ECP would not tolerate any violation on account of publicity material.

As per the Code of Conduct, no person or a political party can affix or distribute posters, handbills, pamphlets, leaflets, banners or portraits, larger than the sizes prescribed by the Commission.