Local government reps to be elected in KP today

In first phase, 17 districts will be going for polling in province

The province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will have local government (LG) elections in its 17 districts on 66 constituencies.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is all set for holding free, transparent and fair elections on Sunday. All the arrangements have been finalized.

The polling will start at 8:00am sharp and will last till 5:00pm without any break and all the voters who will be in the polling compound till 5:00pm will get a chance to cast their vote.

A total of 77,000 security officers will be doing the duty on that day. Meanwhile, the Quick Response Force will be on standby.

A total of 9,202 polling stations are set up for the elections, 2,507 are the most sensitive ones and 4,168 are sensitive.

A total of 2,528 polling stations are normal according to the official data. To monitor the situation throughout the day, CCTV cameras have been installed at sensitive and the most sensitive polling stations.

In the province, 7,015,767 male and 5,653,095 females are eligible to cast the votes and more than 12.6mn voters are registered.

In the 17 districts, almost 37,752 candidates are contesting for different seats. The districts include Peshawar, Charsadda, Nowshera, Khyber, Mardan, Mohmand, Swabi, Karak, Hangu, Kohat, Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Tank, Haripur, Dera Ismail Khan, Bajaur and Buner districts.

19,282 candidates are running for nazim/general councillor positions and 689 candidates are running for the city and tehsil council’s leading positions.

The elections are being held on party basis owing to a Peshawar High Court’s judgment.

The most interesting election is for the city council mayor’s seat, in which 17 candidates are running.

The candidates include Muhammad Rizwan Khan from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)’s Arbab Zarak Khan, Awami National Party (ANP)’s Sher Rehman, Bahrullah from Jamaat-e-Islami and Zubair Ali from the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F).

Every voter will have six different ballot papers in which the party’s name and their symbols will be printed.

According to ECP, a grey ballot paper is for the general seat of the village, neighborhood council.

Like always, there will be a complaint cell where people can register their issues within the time frame.

Before the elections, more than 2,000 candidates have already been elected unopposed in KP.