KP by-polls: ANP wins 2, leading on one PA seats

PESHAWAR: The Awami National Party (ANP) candidates won three seats in the by-election that was conducted peacefully in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Sunday.

ANP’s candidates Samar Haroon Haroon won the PK-78 Peshawar, Waqar Ahmad Khan PK-7 Swat and Ahmad Khan Bahadur was successful on PK-53 in Mardan.

With the victory on these three seats, ANP got nine general seats in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly.

ANP had also fielded candidates PK-44 in Swabi, PK-53 in Mardan, PK-61 and PK-64 in Nowshera.

The ECP had established 117 polling stations in PK-78 that included 63 for male, 53 for female and one combined. The total registered voters in the PK-78 were 175, 379, including 74,007 female voters.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had postponed election on PK-78 when Haroon Bilour was martyred in a suicide attack during a corner meeting before the general election.

The ANP Waqar Ahmad Khan won the PK-7 Swat after getting 14,096 votes. The PTI candidate Fazle Maula secured 13,425 votes.

The PTI candidate Aqibullah Khan was declared a winner on PK-44 with 18,676 votes while the ANP candidate Ghulam Hassan was runner-up with 17,067 votes.

Six candidates including four independents ran for PK-53 in Mardan but the main contest was between PTI’s Muhammad Abdus Salam and ANP’s Ahmad Khan Bahadur.

The ANP candidate was leading the race, according to unofficial results. Ahmad Khan secured 19,065 votes. And PTI’s Abdus Salam got 19,044 votes while results of one polling station were yet to be declared.

The PTI’s Muhammad Ibrahim Khattak got 14, 557 votes while ANP’s Noor Alam Khan secured 9,282 votes in by-election on PK-61 in Nowshera.

Similarly, the contest on PK-64 in Nowshera was between the PTI Liaqat Khan who got 22,775 votes and ANP’s Muhammad Shahid managed to get 9,560 votes.

Earlier in the day, ANP leader Ilyas Bilour told reporters that they would accept the results. However, he termed some of the steps as discouraging female voters from casting votes.

He said that a female polling in Jogiwara locality at Hashtnagri had been set up on the third floor. He also criticized establishment of the female booth at the Government Frontier College for Women, saying that it was established at a wrong place where women had to walk almost two kilometres for polling.