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• Complete ban on campaigning comes into effect ahead of Sunday’s polls
• FO rejects India’s remarks on GB polls as ‘baseless’
KARACHI: The Gilgit-Baltistan Election Commission announced that election campaigning ended at midnight on Friday, 48 hours before polling for the June 7 elections. The decision was taken in accordance with Section 182 of the Elections Act 2017 and the prescribed code of conduct.
According to the commission, a complete ban on all election-related activities has come into effect.
During this period, no individual, political party, candidate or supporter is allowed to organise, attend, promote or participate in public meetings, rallies, processions, gatherings, corner meetings or any other campaign activity within the constituencies.
The commission also prohibited the use of loudspeakers, canvassing and any form of voter influence during the 48-hour period. Political parties, candidates, election agents and workers have been directed to strictly comply with election laws and the code of conduct.
GB CEC Raja Shahbaz Khan said all arrangements had been finalised for the elections, with strict security in place to ensure free, fair and peaceful polling, adding that the election campaigning had concluded peacefully.
Meanwhile, Pakistan “categorically rejected” India’s remarks regarding the upcoming elections in GB, calling them “baseless” and part of a “carefully choreographed attempt to conflate fact with fiction”.
In a statement, Foreign Office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said India remained in “illegal occupation of the internationally recognised disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir” and described New Delhi as a “global leader in propagating fake narratives and tendentious propaganda”.
“We unequivocally reject this latest Indian rhetoric with the contempt it deserves,” the statement said.
Earlier in the day, India’s foreign ministry objected to the upcoming elections in GB, claiming that the entire territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, including ‘Gilgit-Baltistan’, are parts of India”.
Reiterating Islamabad’s position, the FO said the Jammu and Kashmir dispute was the longest unresolved item on the UN Security Council agenda and originated from India’s “forcible and unlawful occupation” of the state in 1947.
Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2026
