iNDICA NEWS BUREAU–
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) founder Imran Khan on Thursday (Pakistan time) cast his vote for the general elections by a postal ballot from Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, local media reported. Other incarcerated leaders who could vote included former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, former Punjab province chief minister Chaudhry Parvez Elahi, Awami Muslim League chief Sheikh Rashid, and former information minister Fawad Chaudhry.
READ: Justice Markandey Katju’s columns on former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan
However, Khan’s wife, Bushra Bibi, could not vote as she was convicted and arrested after the completion of the postal voting process. Only inmates with valid computerized national identity cards (CNICs) were allowed to vote, Dawn reported, quoting jail authorities as saying.
In a post on X on Wednesday, PTI Central Information Secretary Raoof Hasan had said that former prime minister Khan had dedicated everything, including his life, to restore the country’s dignity, honour and sovereignty and ensure the welfare of people.
“As citizens of the country, we have a debt to pay. We must use our vote to change the face of Pakistan by dismantling a rotten system that has cast a vicious stranglehold on the country and its people,” Hasan said.
More than 17,000 candidates will be contesting today’s elections in Pakistan. Voters will elect 266 candidates to the Pakistan National Assembly, who will, by a majority vote, elect the next prime minister.
Simultaneously, voters will also elect representatives to their respective provincial assemblies, who will then elect the provincial chief executives under a similar process.
Meanwhile, elections have been postponed in one national and three provincial assembly constituencies due to the deaths of contesting candidates. This includes NA-8 (Bajaur), PK-22 (Bajaur), PK-91 (Kohat) and PP-266 (Rahim Yar Khan). Voters elsewhere will cast two votes each — one for each of the two assemblies.
In all, 17,816 candidates are in the running, of which 12,695 will be contesting for provincial assembly seats and 5,121 for the National Assembly, as per Dawn.
They include 16,930 men, 882 women and four transgender persons. Of these, 6,031 candidates — 5,726 men and 275 women — are contesting on a political party’s ticket. The remaining 11,785 are contesting as independents, of which 11,174 are men, 607 men and four transgender persons.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Caretaker Interior Ministry has established a control room to monitor the overall situation in Pakistan during the general elections, Pakistan Today reported.
The control room includes representatives of all relevant institutions, including the Interior Department, police and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to perform their duties in the control room. Furthermore, information sharing between law enforcement agencies and other relevant agencies is being ensured in this room, according to a Pakistan Today report.
