Number of women’s votes increased in Shangla re-polling

PESHAWAR: The number of votes polled by the women doubled in the re-polling in the provincial assembly constituency PK-23, Shangla.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had declared the July 25 election in the constituency null and void as the turnout of women voters was less than 10 percent.

As per the result issued by the returning officer, the turnout of female voters in the re-polling was double the number of votes polled by the women on July 25.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) candidate Shaukat Ali Yousafzai again won the election by a huge margin.

He polled 35,290 votes while Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) candidate Muhammad Rishad Khan got 22, 545 votes.

A total of 55,748 votes were polled of which 48,079 were cast by men and 7,669 by women, which is more than 13 percent of the total votes.

On July 25, women polled votes at 12 polling stations only.

The results showed that women polled only 3505 votes, which is 5.02 percent of the polled votes in the constituency.

The men had polled 66,322 votes, which was 94.98 percent of the polled votes.

Interestingly, in re-polling, the male votes dropped from 66,322 to 48, 079.

This time the ECP, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Commission on the Status of Women with the assistance of Aurat Foundation and the candidates took special measures to encourage women to cast votes in the re-election.

The women commission ran a special campaign to increase the turnout of the women voters in the constituency by creating awareness among them.

The ECP had also established special help gender desk for PK-23 for receiving complaints about the ban on women voting in the election.