Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Polling for the third and final phase of local government elections in 12 districts of Punjab and six in Sindh is being held today.

The polling will begin at 7:30 am and will continue till 5:30 pm without any break.

Twelve districts of Punjab where the polling is being held are: Layyah, Rajanpur, DG Khan, Muzaffargarh, Rawalpindi, Jhang, Khushab, Multan, Sialkot, Narowal, Rahim Yar Khan and Bahawalpur.

Elections have been delayed in 16 union councils of Rawalpindi due to court interventions.

In Sindh, the polls are being held in Karachi West, Karachi East, Karachi South, Karachi Central, Korangi and Malir.

The Election Commission has made all the arrangements to hold elections in a smooth manner and has established a control room in Islamabad which will work till the finalisation of results.

The control room will receive complaints regarding irregularities in the polling process and take action for their redressal.

Elaborate security arrangements have been made to maintain law and order and avoid any untoward incident.

According to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) directives, the original computerised national identity card (CNIC) is must to cast vote. Voters will not be allowed to carrying cellular phones inside the polling station.

Supply of election material comprising ballot boxes, voting screen, stationery, stamps, ink, seals for ballot boxes, electoral lists, registers, forms and envelopes, candidates’ lists and bags was completed on Friday evening. All the election material was taken to the polling stations in the vehicles arranged by the returning officers with necessary security staff.

Out of 12 districts in Punjab where polling is being held, seven are in the southern Punjab.

Around 8 million voters of seven districts of South Punjab will elect their representatives at district council, union councils, municipal corporations and municipal committees.

The election atmosphere remained colourful with people demonstrating enthusiasm at corner meetings and door-to-door canvassing amid roaring slogans by supporters till Thursday-Friday midnight.

Army and Rangers personnel have reached different districts to assist police and local administration in fortifying the security arrangements.

Amidst an ongoing operation against criminals and rising sense of security, a vast majority of 7,082,319 eligible voters are expected to exercise their right during the local government polls in Karachi.

In all six districts of Karachi, 70 direct elections will be conducted against 1,520 constituencies, for which 5,401 candidates are in the field contesting for chairman, vice chairman and councillor seats.

Hafeeza Noor, a committed PPP worker, is the only woman among more than 5,000 contenders and is contesting for deputy chairpersonship from UC-7, Lyari, considered to be among the most sensitive areas of the metropolis.

She may not be among those 48 candidates elected unopposed in Karachi but is quite confident about her success, regretting that despite assurances and reassurance most of the political parties failed to honour their commitment and did not field their women workers in the LG polls 2015.

Eighteen candidates have been elected unopposed in Karachi’s Central district, followed by 13 in West, nine in South, six in Malir and two in East. Voters in urban areas of Karachi will elect a total of 1,210 members while those inhabiting its rural areas will vote for 304 seats in 38 union councils. Security remains a major concern for many of the candidates as well as voters as ECP itself has declared 1,714 of the total 4,037 polling stations functional in Karachi as highly sensitive, 1329 as sensitive and remaining 226 polling stations as regular or normal.

The Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) has deployed 1,043 ‘independent, neutral and unbiased’ observers to observe the third and last phase of the local government elections in Sindh and Punjab, says a press statement.

As many as 895 (573 male, 322 female) observers have been deployed in Punjab and 148 (116 male, 32 female) in Sindh to observe the election. The network has already observed the first two phases of the elections and the one held in Islamabad on November 30, 2015.