Balochistan LG polls: Voters favour ‘independents’, ignore political parties

QUETTA: Independent candidates proved to be favourite of voters, who largely ignored political parties’ candidates in Balochistan’s local government (LG) elections which took place on Sunday.

According to the unofficial vote count by Monday evening, the independent candidates won 1882 seats, while Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUIF) got 472 seats. Other parties with their unofficial seat count is as under:

Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) 303, Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PKMAP) 142, National Party (NP) 145, Balochistan National Party Mengal (BNPM) 102, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) 134, Balochistan National Party Awami (BNPA) 68, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) 71, Awami National Party (ANP) 44, Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP) 19, Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN) 20, and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) 16.

The polling for local government elections in Balochistan’s 32 out of total 34 districts ended, with more than 100 women contesting polls on general seats for the first time in the province’s history.

“As many as 3,552,398 people were supposed to exercise their right to vote in the LG polls. Around 5,226 polling stations were set up in Balochistan’s 32 districts,” the Election Commission of Pakistan said in a tweet.

Frontier Corps (FC) and the army personnel had been deployed in Kohlu, Panjgur, Gwadar, Awaran, Khuzdar, Chaman, and Killa Abdulla, Balochistan government spokesperson Farah Azeem Shah said in a press conference.