MULTAN: The July 19 by-polls for NA-151 will be held under the new modified rules and four teams of ECP are patrolling the constituency for monitoring, an official of regional office of Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) Multan said on Thursday.

The teams are accompanying the police and professional camerapersons which prepare footage upon noticing any violation.

There were minor violations initially but now things are improving, officials said. Wall chalking has been banned under the new rules and candidates can only display banners or affix hoardings for the election campaign.

There will be no voters' facilitators from the political parties or the camps of political parties outside the polling stations as was the practice in past. And instead, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has hired teachers to set up one camp outside each of the 245 polling stations of NA-151 to facilitate the voters and these facilitators are called camp officials.

Meanwhile, The ECP Multan regional office has also dispatched vote slips (Parchi) containing details like voter's name, vote number and the polling station by post to all over 3 million registered voters of NA-151. Those, who will not receive the slip, will be facilitated by the camp officials outside the polling stations.

The camp officials, presiding officers, assistant presiding officers and polling agents are also undergoing training by ECP. The training that began on July 11, will conclude on July 15, officials said.

The polling agents of all candidates will perform duty inside the polling stations.

As per the instructions of ECP, all the candidates including MPA Syed Abdul Qadir Gilani have got their new accounts opened for election expenses whose ceiling has been fixed at Rs 1.5 million.

Candidates are regularly sending weekly expense reports to the ECP every Thursday, officials said.

It may be noted that it was a Multan constituency of PP-149 where electronic voting machine (EVM) had made debut on experimental basis at two model polling stations of ECP during by-polls held in February 2012.