Public holiday announced on July 25

ISLAMABAD: A public holiday has been announced on July 25 – the day of general elections in the country.

Chief election commissioner Sardar Muhammad Raza Khan has approved the public holiday on July 25 during a meeting today.

A total number of 11,855 candidates will running for the 849 general seats of National Assembly and four provincial assemblies.

This includes a total of 3,459 candidates — 1,623 from Punjab, 824 from Sindh, 725 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 287 from Balochistan. They will contest for the 272 general seats of the National Assembly. The National Assembly – the lower house of the parliament in the Pakistan’s democratic system consists of 342 members, of which 272 are directly elected, 60 seats are reserved for women and 10 are open to religious minorities. A political party needs at least 172 seats of simple majority to form a government the national level and has the right to select a prime minister.

The ECP says a total of 8,396 are running for 577 general seats of the four provincial assemblies.

The figures show marked decrease in the number of candidates contesting elections this time compared to the 2013 general elections when a total of 15,629 candidates — 4,671 for National Assembly and 10,958 for provincial assemblies — ran in the race to form government.

According to the ECP, a total of 105.96 million voters out of total population of about 200 million people are included in the electoral roll to cast vote in elections on July 25, 2018. They include: 59.22million male and 46.73million females, with the gender gap between male and female rising to around 12.5m. This shows that 55.9 per cent of the registered voters in Pakistan are males while only 44.1pc are females.