ISLAMABAD: A day before the local government elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Election Commission on Friday stopped the provincial government from setting up a control room for consolidation of results.

A letter issued by the ECP secretary to the provincial chief secretary expressed concern over the plan for such an arrangement.

The KP chief secretary was asked to issue directives to the quarters concerned not to establish any control room because such an arrangement already exis­ted at the provincial election commissioner’s office and the Election Commission secretariat.

Know more: ECP irked by possibility of bar on women voters in KP

The commission has also taken serious view of a report about a plan to bar women from voting in a union council of Nowshera.

The district returning officer (deputy commissioner) had sent a letter to the ECP, disclosing that elders of the Balu union council had decided to bar women from casting votes in the elections scheduled for Saturday. The ECP asked Chief Secretary Amjad Ali Khan to look into the matter and ensure that women were not barred from voting.

The Hangu DRO assured the ECP that women would be free to cast their votes without any hindrance. In a letter to the ECP secretary, the DRO said no complaint had been received in this regard and the district administration had kept a close watch on all such illegal moves.

“All the political parties and elders of Hangu district have also assured the Kohat commissioner that women voters will cast their votes freely and without any pressure,” the letter said.

The returning officers have been asked to take immediate action against all elements hindering women’s voting.

The ECP had asked the provincial government and all DROs to closely monitor the situation and check any move in shape of a written or verbal agreement, speech, announcement or any other instigation which could discourage women from exercising their right of franchise.

An ECP official told Dawn that arrangements to hold the polls had been completed. He said 11,154 polling stations had been set up.

He said 4,071 polling stations had been declared sensitive with respect to security concerns and 2,858 ‘most sensitive’.

The official said elaborate security arrangements had been made, with the number of personnel deployed exceeding 100,000.

He said that besides KP police and the Frontier Corps, police from Punjab, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir, as well as Levies, would also be part of the security cover.

He said 84,420 candidates were in the run for 41,762 seats of neighbourhood, village, district, tehsil and town councils.

The official said 72.2 million ballot papers in seven colours had been printed.

White ballot papers were meant for general seats, pink for women, light green for peasants, yellow for youths, brown for minorities, orange for district council members and light grey for tehsil and town council members.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2015

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