Pakistan started polling process for the general elections as 128 million voters are heading to polls to vote for nearly 18,000 candidates contesting the General Elections 2024 on February 8 for 1,125 seats in the National Assembly and four provincial assemblies.
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Today is a public holiday in Pakistan to make polling process more convenient for the voters to exercise their right to vote.
As the country saw subdued election campaign, excited voters rushed to the polling station before time.
Pakistan established over 90000 polling stations in all four provinces.
Mobile phone services, internet suspended in Pakistan as voting underway
Candidates & Constituencies
In the contest for the National Assembly are 5,121 candidates. They belong either to Pakistan’s 167 registered political parties or are independents.
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has assigned 150 different symbols to registered political parties while 174 have been allotted to independent candidates.
Polling time
Voting will begin at 8am and continue till 5pm without a break.
Who is running for Elections 2024?
All major political parties including Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) have kicked off campaigning, while the country’s most popular party – the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) – seems to be missing.
While the former prime minister Imran Khan remains incarnated at Adiala Jail and out of election race, his PTI has been barred from using the party symbol in the upcoming elections. The PTI claims to have fielded 236 candidates for the NA, who are contesting under various election symbols.
Check Pakistan Elections 2024 Results here
In the past 11 elections, the number of independent candidates for the NA hovered around 53pc whereas now 63pc of independent candidates are competing. The additional 10 percentage points translate into an additional 500 independent candidates, which means that there are 264 (after subtracting the PTI’s claimed candidates) additional independent candidates. These may be covering candidates for the PTI or part of another scheme which may unfold after the election.
This trend of a higher number of independent candidates is slightly stronger in the case of the provincial assemblies where 66pc of the candidates are independent. Unless the returned independent candidates, especially those nominated by the PTI, display a strong character and party loyalty, there is a likelihood that such independent legislators will be vulnerable to huge pressure and temptations.
In the 2018 general elections, returned independent candidates played a decisive role in the formation of the PTI-led governments at the federal level and in Punjab. The proverbial Jehangir Tareen private plane had frantically ferried such legislators to Islamabad and Lahore at the time.
Since the stakes and likely number of independent legislators are much higher this time, one may see a record-breaking push and pull to win over independent legislators. What kind of effect such an exercise at such a large scale would have on the political landscape, especially on whatever little is left of ethics in politics, is not difficult to comprehend.
