ISLAMABAD, Oct 11: The Election Commission of Pakistan clarified on Friday that delay in the announcement of results by the commission was due to heavy load of work.

Explaining the reasons for the delay, EC Secretary Hasan Mohammad said there were 64,475 polling stations with 164,718 polling booths in the country and on the demand of some of the political parties, the counting of the votes was being done manually without use of any computer.

The EC secretary said due to increase in the number of polling stations and manual compilation of results, finalization of results was being delayed.

He said the number of national and provincial assemblies had been increased this year. Besides, he pointed out, polling for national and provincial assemblies were also conducted on the same day, which also delayed the compilation of the results.

He said after preparing the results manually, the returning officers conveyed these to the EC and also confirmed it through telefax, after which the results were being released to the media.

The secretary said the EC was also taking special care this time before announcement of results which had been causing delay in the announcement of results after the polls.—APP