ABBOTTABAD: All six applications for vote recount in four provincial assembly and two National Assembly constituencies of Abbottabad district were rejected by the respective returning officers on Saturday.

The applicants included Ali Asghar Khan of the PTI in NA-15, Mohabat Awan of the PML-N in NA-16, independent candidate in PK-36 Sardar Mohammad Fareed, Waqar Nabi of the PTI in PK-37, Mohammad Arshad of the PML-N in PK-38 and Inayatullah Khan Jadoon of the PML-N in PK-39.

In Mardan, postal ballots consolidated the electoral victory of Awami National Party’s Ameer Haider Khan Hoti in the NA-21 constituency.

The relevant election officials told Dawn that they had received a total of 586 postal ballot papers, whose counting was completed late on Friday.

They said ANP nominee Hoti and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf candidate Mohammad Atif Khan got 240 and 123 postal ballots, respectively.

The officials said the election results put the total votes polled by Hoti at 79,151 and those by Atif at 78,999.

They said before the postal ballots were counted, Hoti led election by 35 votes only. In Swabi, 30,682 of the total votes polled for the district’s two National Assembly and five provincial assembly seats on July 25 were rejected.

Most votes were rejected in NA-19, Swabi-I. A total of 211,730 votes were polled there but 8,023 of them were rejected.

In NA-18, 7,285 of the total 194,828 polled votes were rejected.

The number of rejected votes totaled 2,997 in PK-43, 3,616 in PK-44, 3,159 in PK-45, 3,353 in PK-46 and 2,249 in PK-47.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2018