Voting underway for Pakistan General Election, separate polling stations for Male and Female Voters
Islamabad: Millions flock to vote amid tight security as voting opens for Pakistan’s 11th General Elections. The first vote was cast at Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Charsadda, according to the Pakistani newspaper Dawn. Younger brother of jailed former PM Nawaz Sarif and PML-N chief Sahwaz Sarif is also among the first people to cast his vote.
Total 11,673 candidates are contesting the elections, out of which 3,428 are for National Assembly and 8,245 are for provincial assembly seats. Another interesting thing is that, the independent candidates have outnumbered the candidates fielded by political parties. The number of candidates fielded by parties is 5,661 while the number of independent candidates in the race is 6,012.For National Assembly seats, 1,623 candidates are in the race, 1,805 of them fielded by political parties and 1,623 independents.
While about 105.95 million voters are casting their votes, as many as 8 lakh security personnel have been deployed across the country. A total of 8,508 polling stations and 244,687 polling booths have been established across the country. As many as 40,632 of the polling stations are combined and there are 23,104 male and 21,322 female polling stations. Around 17,007 polling stations have been declared highly sensitive. The main triangular fight is being fought between Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI).