ISLAMABAD, Feb 8 (APP): A daylong polling process concluded on Thursday for the General Election 2024 overall in a peaceful manner, with active participation from all age group voters who came out in droves to elect candidates of their choice.
The polling started simultaneously across the country at 8 a.m. and continued till 5 p.m. without any break to provide maximum time to citizens to exercise their right to vote enshrined in the constitution.
The voters present in the premises of the polling stations at the poll-ending time were allowed to cast their votes, said a spokesperson for the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).
Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja had been personally seeing the election proceeding at the Central Election Monitoring Control Center.
According to the ECP, over 128 million registered voters were scheduled to exercise their democratic right by casting votes for candidates participating in elections for the national and provincial legislatures.
The polling was held for 265 seats of the National Assembly and 590 seats of provincial assemblies.
The voting took place on 51 seats of the Balochistan Assembly, 128 out of 130 seats of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, 296 out of 297 seats of the Punjab Assembly and 130 seats of the Sindh Assembly.
The polling was held in 855 constituencies out of 859 however due to the death of the candidate, voting will not be held in NA 8, PP 266, PK 22 and PK 91.
The government had deployed over 648,000 security personnel nationwide to ensure the safety of voters, as well as, conduct of fair and transparent polling process.
Out of 648,000 security personnel deployed, 137,000 were from army and paramilitary force, while 511,000 policemen performed duties during the election.
An average of seven to eight security personnel manned each of the 90,777 polling stations across the country.
In the first tier, the police performed the duty, along with the civil armed forces in the second tier and the armed forces in the third tier.
A special aerial Quick Reaction Force (QRF) had also been established to promptly deal with any untoward incident, especially in the Balochistan province.
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