LAHORE: Believing the by-election in NA-120 to be more sensitive the returning officer of the constituency has made a formal request to call the Pakistan Army for security. The seat fell vacant following the disqualification of Nawaz Sharif by the Supreme Court. Now the former premier’s spouse has been named as a candidate for the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) to contest the by-polls. Keeping the gravity of the situation, RO for NA-120 Muhammad Shahid has forwarded a written request to the Election Commission of Pakistan secretary, who will send it to the Interior Ministry with his strong recommendation of deputing army officials to maintain law and order in the constituency during polling on September 17. According to sources in provincial election commission office, Director General Admin and Monitoring Election Commission Brig (r) Muhammad Naeem Akbar Qazi personally made a detailed tour of the constituency on Tuesday morning to check security-related issues in the area. Sources told Daily Times that a special meeting was also held to review security issues and other administrative matters in order to hold polling in a free, fair and transparent manner. The meeting was presided over the DG Admin in which provincial election commissioner and other officials also participated. The sources further informed that the meeting discussed the issue of using biometric devices on an experimental basis in some of the polling stations in the constituency NA-120. Details of administrative work for the polling day were also discussed. There are a total of 321,633 voters – 179,505 male and 142,128 female voters – while 220 polling stations will be set up in NA-120. While. Moreover, 220 presiding officers, 568 assistant presiding officers and 568 polling officers will be appointed for holding polling procedure in a smooth manner. It is worth mentioning here that the spokesman for the ECP has confirmed that the final decision regarding calling the Pakistan Army officials for maintaining law and order in the constituency would be made by the election commission secretary after assessing the situation and looking at requirements. Sources in the ECP told this scribe that generally, the Interior Ministry does not turn down the request of the commission on the matter of security, so army officials, as per the necessity, would be deputed during the by-election. Published in Daily Times, August 16th 2017.