Live: Elections 2024

Independent candidate Jibran Nasir says the government has “robbed voters and political parties — specifically PTI and candidates — of their rights by shutting down mobile services across the country.”

“The power brokers are not only against our freedom of expression but also our right to information,” he said. “Anything which empowers the people is despised by the ruling class.”

“But we all have to rise above, take this challenge and step out to vote for the sake of democracy and our collective future,” he added.

In Karachi’s NA-238 constituency, a high voter turnout was observed outside the polling station, but operational inefficiencies led to long queues, according to KAS-Dawn.com fellow Hawwa Fazal.

Notably, there were inadequate provisions for the elderly and disabled individuals, compounding the challenges faced by voters. Naseer Khan, a voter visiting the DMSS Boys School polling station, recounted an incident where a woman — who had undergone a recent knee surgery — was unable to cast her vote due to the booths being located upstairs.

Khan expressed dismay over the situation, saying the presiding officer collected the necessary details for voter registration but failed to return promptly.

Khan said that with the help of some police officers, they carried the woman in her wheelchair to the upper floor. Upon reaching the voting booths, the presiding officer acknowledged the inconvenience and apologised.

When questioned about the delay, the presiding officer said that the station was allotted at 2am. He said that to facilitate the voters who could not climb the stairs, he personally went with a team member to help them cast their vote.

Senior journalist Kamran Khan has said that it is “heartening to see a pretty smart turnout even in the early hours of polling all across the country”.

“The encouraging voting pattern so far is very peaceful, with no serious incidents of violence reported from anywhere in the country,” he stated on X.

“Surprisingly, tech-savvy PTI boys and girls are beating severe restrictions to reach out to voters, guiding them on PTI candidates and election symbols in respective constituencies.”

According to Dawn editor (Kyber Pakhtunkhwa) Ismail Khan, the voter turnout across the province averaged nine per cent by 11:30am.

“It may pick up post lunch time,” he said.

PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif has urged people to get out and exercise their right to vote, specifically for his party.

He added that PML-N will combat the culture of “abuse” and “indecency”, adding that the party will also combat inflation and work for the people.

Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan’s (MQM-P) Dr Farooq Sattar has cast his vote at a polling station in Karachi’s PIB Colony.

Police teams have started patrolling sensitive areas in Faisalabad during the ongoing polling process.

A police spokesman said the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has established a total of 3,687 polling stations in the district, where 475 polling stations were declared most sensitive and 1,695 declared sensitive.

The police department has made tight security arrangements for these polling stations by deploying more than 16,900 security, the spokesperson said. He added that the dolphin force, elite force and quick response force were activated for thorough patrolling especially in sensitive areas to avert any untoward incident.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has directed the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) to issue a warning to Geo News and ARY News for continuously violating the code of conduct.

According to a spokesperson of the commission, the news channels, despite clear instructions from the ECP, aired statements and interviews of political leaders live.

Former climate change minister Sherry Rehman has filed a petition in Lahore’s election commission against the suspension of mobile and internet services.

Speaking outside the electoral watchdog’s office, Rehman expressed concern at the internet outage on election day and demanded that services be restored “urgently”.

The PPP leader said that suspending the internet services would “negate democracy and the polling process”, emphasising that candidates needed an internet connection to remain in touch with their polling agents.

“Our entire communication system depends on the internet. How will polling agents convey their complaints to us?”

The PPP vice-president stated that the party would approach the court as well regarding the matter. Rehman highlighted that the entire country had not been declared “sensitive”, adding that the security situation during the 2008 elections was worse.

“Extremely disappointed with the slow pace of the election process!” says Balochistan National Party-Mengal’s (BNP-M) Sardar Akhtar Mengal.

“One polling station in Kakhaher with 1,400 voters has only 40 votes casted so far, and another Peshi with 1,400 voters has only 60 votes. No contact with far-flung areas due to network issues,” he said.

Sindh Governor Kamran Khan Tessori has appealed to the people of the province to cast their votes today.

“All residents of the province must exercise their right to vote”, he said in a statement.

“I urge the elderly, women and youth to cast their votes for the right candidates after careful thought and consideration,” he added.

“The next five years depend on the results of these elections,” he added.

Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) leader Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui has expressed confidence in winning 40 seats in the Sindh Assembly.

Speaking to reporters in Karachi, Siddiqui said, “God-willing, we will win around 40 provincial seats. There is no contest on 16 seats in Karachi while there is one on two seats.”

In an apparent reference to the Jammat-i-Islami, he said that political parties should be “serving religion” but instead they “use religion to serve themselves”. “They term their symbol the scales of justice,” he said.

PML-N’s Attaullah Tarar hit back at a reporter who said that PTI voters were scared to say out loud that they had voted for a PTI candidate.

“No one can cure fear,” he said while talking to the media in Lahore. “They charged Rana Sanaullah in a heroin case but he didn’t run and cry.”

“Their voters are coming and no one is stopping them. Tell me where have they been stopped?” he asked.

“I have not seen such an issue here where anyone was stopped. I think there is freedom and ECP has made the arrangements very well,” Tarar added.

Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) leader Hafiz Naeemur Rehman has decried the suspension of mobile services on election day.

Speaking to the media in Karachi after casting his vote, he said, “This is a great injustice with the 250m population of Karachi, where they have shut down mobile services.”

There are elements of the 2018 election atmosphere — allegations of pre-poll rigging and an unfair contest, fears about manipulation and security threats — but they feel even more pronounced as the head of the country’s most popular party — and his party symbol — are out of the race.

Camp PML-N oozes the cool confidence of a would-be victor — a sharp contrast from the last election when the three-time former premier Nawaz Sharif was incarcerated. Then his party was the clear underdog, but the situation could not be more different today. With a campaign largely confined to Punjab launched as late as mid-January, the Sharif family flew to and from rallies in a helicopter, and had to often exit early as they explained to their supporters that they had to fly out before darkness.

What does their voter think? “Nawaz Sharif has the magic wand, and he will wave it when he comes to power,” a supporter told me in a busy market in central Punjab. But he warned: “We are prepared to wait for the economic situation to improve, but this time he must complete his term.”

No doubt, his return to Pakistan has reinvigorated the party and its vote bank, but was there enough fire in his public engagements? Will it help the PML-N cross that coveted three-digit threshold to make government?

Read more here.

Outside a polling station in Islamabad, 22-year-old psychology student Haleema Shafiq says she is determined to vote.

“I believe in democracy. I want a government that can make Pakistan safer for girls,” she told AFP.

But another voter expressed the doubts of many.

“My only fear is whether my vote will be counted for the same party I cast it for. At the same time, for the poor it does not matter who is ruling — we need a government that can control inflation,” said Syed Tassawar, a 39-year-old construction worker.

PTI Information Secretary Raoof Hasan has told AFP that the internet outage “will impede the work that our activists are doing on the ground to get people to the polling stations”.

“The physical space given to us has been completely cut out so we are totally dependent on connectivity through the net,” he said.

Strict arrangements have been made for security in Karachi’s district Korangi, said SSP Hassan Sardar Ahmed Khan.

He said that the polling process had started and 5,271 police personnel were posted on election duty for security.

District Korangi has 725 polling stations out of which 509 polling stations have been declared highly sensitive and 216 sensitive, he said.

NetBlocks, a global internet watchdog, has said that the ongoing internet suspension in Pakistan was “inherently undemocratic” and known to “cause irregularities in the voting process”.

“The ongoing election day internet blackout in Pakistan is amongst the largest we’ve observed in any country in terms of severity and extent,” NetBlocks director Alp Toker told AFP.

“The practice is inherently undemocratic and is known to limit the work of independent election observers and cause irregularities in the voting process.”

Dawn.com staff Siham Basir witnessed a “dismal” voter turnout at a polling station in Karachi’s NA-241 constituency. She said the lines were not very long at the Government Girls College, Zamzama and by the time she left, there was no line at all.

“One polling officer seemed completely untrained because she was not even able to cross our names out let alone find our names efficiently. The greatest inefficiency was in checking the electoral rolls,” she said.

“At my polling station, there were a lot of elderly people — people in wheelchairs and using walking sticks — but they were made to walk up a flight of stairs instead of a facility being made available on the ground floor. I witnessed one elderly man being carried up in his wheelchair and one man having to physically lift his mother up the stairs so she could vote,” she noted.

“Despite going at 8am and being among the first people there, some of the polling agents were rude and were yelling. They also didn’t check for mobile phones — a man pulled out his phone in front of me to ask the presiding officer something,” she said.

The Faisalabad police have uprooted the camps set up by candidates outside polling station number 340 at MC High School in the district’s NA-101 constituency.

According to Dawn.com correspondent Kashif Hussain, the camps were uprooted as they were established within a distance of 100 metres from the polling station, which was against the rules.

Video footage showed policemen tearing down party banners and uprooting polling camps of the PML-N and other candidates.

A low voter turnout was reported at a polling station in North Nazimabad’s Block I for Karachi’s NA-250 constituency.

Dawn.com staffer Mashael Shah said she reached the Ibrahim Ali Bhai Govt School at 10am to cast her vote, adding that attendance was thin.

“It took five minutes to go in and vote and there was practically no wait,” she said. She further said that only the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) had set up a camp outside the polling station.

The polling process has started in Karachi’s district Central, according to SSP District Central Zeeshan Shafique Siddiqui.

More than 2.1 million voters are exercising their right to vote at a total of 391 polling buildings and 1,255 polling stations, he said, adding that police had made full security arrangements in this regard.

He said that 685 polling stations have been declared highly sensitive while 570 polling stations have been declared sensitive. More than 8,900 male and female police officers have been deputed for security while 7,645 officers are posted at polling stations, he added.

The highly sensitive polling stations are also being monitored with the help of CCTV cameras, according to the SSP.

With around 5,000 candidates contesting for 265 National Assembly seats today, things are expected to get quite chaotic when results start trickling in later in the evening. With voters eager to find out if their favoured candidates are ahead and where their favourite party stands in the race to ‘win’ the general election, every single constituency will count.

Amidst the hundreds of contests today, there are some that will be more closely watched than others, for a variety of reasons. These could include areas which are battleground constituencies due to their swing potential, areas where two or more strong candidates are contesting, or areas which are likely to see heightened tensions due to the prominence or history of the people involved.

Given the contestants’ political mettle, these will not be easy fights for any of the candidates involved.

Read the full story here.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has said that its central election monitoring control centre in Islamabad is “fully functional” and is in “constant communication” with its regional and district-level counterparts.

In a press release, monitoring centre in-charge Haroon Khan Shinwari said Chief Election Commissioner Sikander Sultan Raja was present at the premises to supervise the electoral process.

“The polling process is under way in a peaceful manner,” the electoral watchdog stated, adding that “no complaints have been received as yet from anywhere”.

PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has said that mobile phone services in the country must be restored “immediately”.

He further said that he has asked the party to approach the Election Commission of Pakistan and the courts in this regard.

Shortly before polling began, mobile phone signals were shut down “temporarily” at the interior ministry’s directives over security issues, prompting criticism from politicians and journalists.

In a statement, the ministry said, “Recent surge in terrorist activities resulting in precious lives have stirred security environment in the country.”

Therefore, it added, “need has arisen to take measures to safeguard against” security threats.

Caretaker Federal Minister for Information Murtaza Solangi has said that “voting is a part of patriotism”.

“Voting is your national duty. The country’s democratic future and your well-being depend on you stepping out of your homes to perform your national and democratic duty,” he said after casting his vote in Islamabad’s NA-46.

Former PTI leader Asad Umar has underscored the “power” of voting in a post on X.

“The greatest power a citizen has in a democratic country is the power of their vote. In our system, this option is given only once in five years. That’s why today is a special day. Use your power. Vote according to your conscience and thinking,” he stated.

Internet monitor Netblocks has said that real-time data shows that internet blackouts are now in effect in “multiple regions of Pakistan in addition to mobile network disruptions”.

“The incident comes on election day and follows months of digital censorship targeting the political opposition,” it said.

This comes after mobile phone signals were shut down “temporarily” at the interior ministry’s directives over security issues.

In a statement, the ministry said, “Recent surge in terrorist activities resulting in precious lives have stirred security environment in the country.”

Therefore, it added, “need has arisen to take measures to safeguard against” security threats.

Caretaker Federal Minister for Information Murtaza Solangi has cast the first vote at a polling station in Islamabad’s NA-46.

According to PTV News, the minister reached the polling station before voting began at 8am and cast the first vote.

Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja has said that he hoped that the election process will be “free and fair” and will conclude safely. He stressed that shutting down or allowing internet and mobile services was beyond the ECP’s mandate.

“We have clarified multiple times that our system is not dependent on the internet — it will not affect our preparations,” he told the media outside the ECP office in Islamabad.

He further said that the ECP did not give any instructions to the interior ministry regarding internet services. “This is the decision of the law and order agencies. We can only give our recommendations,” he said.

“If we give them directions [to open mobile services] and if there is any incident, then who will be responsible?” he asked.