MITHI: The statistics available on the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) website show that the highest voter turnout of 70.91 per cent (71.40pc male and 70.51pc female) was in Thar’s NA-222 followed by the NA-221 with 68.68 per cent (72.83pc male and 65.39pc female).

MITHI: Two National Assembly constituencies of Tharparkar have amazingly registered the highest turnout in the July 25 general elections and more interestingly the number of men and women voters are almost equal.

In the NA-222 constituency, a total of 234,374 votes were cast and 12,783 of them were rejected while in the NA-221 constituency, 167,194 votes were cast and 9,341 of them were rejected. There appeared to be different reasons for the rejection of the votes.

Political quarters in the Thar region appreciate the trend especially pointing out that the elections were held in extremely hot weather conditions.

Tharis came out of their houses to visit their far off polling stations braving the unfavourable weather conditions, troublesome road network and, in most areas, poor telecommunication network.

Both NA-221 and 222 were won by Pakistan Peoples Party candidates. The PPP also secured two of Thar’s three Sindh Assembly seats.

The Grand Democratic Alliance won the PS-54 where Haji Abdul Razzak Rahimoon defeated PPP’s Dost Mohammad Rahimoon, according to unofficial results.

Tharparkar’s population is estimated at around 1.6 million and the number of registered votes in its National Assembly constituencies is 574,333 (254,522 of them women).

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2018