Campaign for by-elections ends, polling tomorrow

ISLAMABAD: Canvassing for by-elections in 35 constituencies of national and provincial assemblies ended last night as voters will head to the polling stations to elect their representatives on Sunday (October 14). 

All arrangements for by-polls have been finalised with the army troops deployed to provide security at the polling stations to avoid any untoward incident.

By-polls will be held on 11 National Assembly seats, including two in Lahore, two in Rawalpindi and one each in Karachi, Faisalabad, Gujrat, Chakwal, Bannu and Attock.

Whereas, 24 provincial assemblies’ constituencies where by-elections will be held included two in Sindh, nine in KP and two in Balochistan. Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s candidates have already been elected unopposed from Punjab Assembly’s constituencies PP-87, Mianwali, and PP-296, Rajanpur.

As many as 1, 727 polling stations out of the total 7,489 set up in 35 constituencies have been declared as highly sensitive.

According to ECP, 848 out of total 5,193 polling stations in Punjab, 544 of total 1,555 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 201 of total 544 in Sindh and 134 of total 197 in Balochistan have been declared as highly sensitive.

Besides deployment of army troops, security cameras have been installed at all the sensitive polling stations. The deployment of troops began on Friday and the troops would remain deployed at the polling stations till Oct 15.

A total of 9.28 million people from the 35 constituencies will exercise their right to vote in the Oct 14 by-polls. Of the total, 6.18m voters are in Punjab, 2 mi in KP, 0.884m in Sindh and 0.182m in Balochistan.