Low turnout mars by-polls in Rawalpindi

Rawalpindi: The overall turnout during the by-elections in two constituencies of Rawalpindi on Sunday remained relatively low. In many polling stations, only a handful of votes were cast till the filing of this report.

The final turnout will be estimated late night after the compilation of the polling stations’ result.

Deputy Commissioner (DC), Rawalpindi Dr. Umar Jahangir and City Police Officer (CPO) Abbas Ahsen visited several polling stations in Rawalpindi to monitor security arrangements.

Talking to media persons, the deputy commissioner said that polling was held in a peaceful manner as they did not receive any complaint of bad incident.

He said that they established parking near the polling stations only to facilitate public.

Polling was started at 8:00 am morning but voters started to come out from homes at about 10:00 am. From 10:00 am to 12:00 noon some of voters polled their votes in different polling stations.

From 12:00 am to 5:00 pm public in low pace polled their votes. But the number of women voters was very low.

Total 13 candidates were in the run for by-elections in NA-60, Rawalpindi-IV and NA-63, Rawalpindi-VII, two constituencies of Rawalpindi District.

Army Jawans and police personnel had taken full control of all polling stations to hold fair and free elections. Total 76 polling stations in Rawalpindi were declared highly sensitive where personnel had been deployed in larger numbers for the by-elections.

The main contest for NA-60 between Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s candidate Sheikh Rashid Shafique and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), Sajjad Khan, while other contestants vying for the seat included, Tehreek Labbaik Pakistan’s candidate, Zahid Aqeel, Pakistani Awami League’s Asghar Ali Mubarak, and independent candidates Muhammad Qaiser Mir Dad Khan, Aftab Ahmed Qureshi, Tehmina Sajjad Khan and Dr Muhammad Azhar Aslam.

While for NA-63, five candidates were competing including Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf candidate Mansoor Hayat Khan, Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians candidate Syed Ishrat Ali Zaidi, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) candidate Aqeel Malik, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan candidate Qurban Ali, and independent candidate Syed Haider Ali Shah.

General elections in NA-60 were postponed after conviction of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) candidate, Hanif Abbasi in the ephedrine quota case. Whereas NA-63 constituency fell vacant after Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI)’s Ghulam Sarwar Khan vacated the seat.

Elections also held in Islamabad’s NA-53 constituency which fell vacant after Prime Minister Imran Khan opted to keep his Mianwali seat and vacated the other four seats he had won in the general elections.

There were nine candidates vying for the Islamabad seat but the real competition was between PTI’s Ali Nawaz Awan and PMLN’s Waqar Ahmed. There was low turn-out in Islamabad’s NA-53 as contesting candidates badly failed to bring voters to polling stations.