NA 19 Haripur by elections Polling under way

Polling for by election in NA-19 Haripur is under way and will continue till five pm in the evening without any interval.

Nine candidates including Babar Nawaz Khan of PML(N), Raja Aamir Zaman of PTI and Haji Mohammad Tahir Qureshi of PPP are in the run for the election.

Over five hundred and fifty thousand registered voters including over two hundred and fifty thousand female voters will exercise their right to vote. For this purpose, election commission has established five hundred and thirteen polling stations.

Polling started at 8:00AM in the morning and is scheduled to continue uninterrupted until 5:00PM. According to some reports, women were barred from voting at five polling stations.

There are 577,480 registered voters, including 259,319 women, in the constituency. Around 2,000 soldiers, 13,000 policemen and 25 platoons of Frontier Corps (FC) personnel have been deployed inside and outside the polling stations to avoid any untoward incident.

Nine candidates are in the run, including Raja Amir Zaman of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, Babar Nawaz Khan of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Tahir Qureshi of Pakistan People’s Party. Independent candidates are also running for the seat.

A tough contest is expected between the Pakistan MUslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) candidates.

The NA-19 constituency seat fell vacant when the Supreme Court de-seated Omer Ayub Khan on the petition of his rival candidate Dr Raja Amir Zaman.

The district administration has made elaborate security arrangements to provide peaceful environment to voters on polling day.

Election Commission will adopt bio-metric system at 30 polling stations in NA-19 Haripur today.

According to the commission, the new system will be implemented with the joint collaboration of NADRA, PTA and Ufone.

In case of success, the bio-metric system would be replicated in local government and by-elections in other part of the country.

Special teams have been trained for this purpose.