The roads of Peshawar remained deserted due to the absence of the public transport on the Election Day however, on the other hand unexpectedly huge rush of people was witnessed at the polling stations in provincial capital.
The business activities remained at halt as almost all the commercial markets remained closed. Interestingly despite the ban imposed by the Election Commission of Pakistan on the political parties to not to arrange vehicles for their voters people were coming on their own to cast their votes.
The electioneering in Peshawar was mostly limited to fixing banners, posters and hoisting flags all over the city. Despite of the fact that this year’s elections were one of the toughest with all major political parties contesting against each other after failing to get seat adjustments; the election campaign by the candidates remained lackluster.
69 contestants were in the run for four National Assembly seats from Peshawar while 212 candidates will try their luck to enter the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly by contesting elections on 11 provincial assembly seats from Peshawar.
However, hardly any big public gathering from any political party was seen in Peshawar. Both Awami National Party (ANP) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) have limited their election campaigns to corner meetings and they too insides arenas like hujras and houses due to severe threats from Taliban. Pakistan Muslim League has only one Iqbal Zafar Jhagra as known political figure who is contesting elections from NA-3. Recently PML-N Chief Mian Nawaz Sharif has also addressed the public gathering in the hometown of its Secretary General in Jhagra.
The other candidates of PML-N have failed to grab the attention of the media by failing to hold some big public gatherings.
One the other hand, Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf whose chairman is also contesting from NA-1 Peshawar against ANP stalwart Ghulam Ahmed Bilour. The recent visit of Imran Khan to Peshawar was limited opening office at Dalazak Road which he couldn’t due to some mismanagement. This means candidates of four of the major political parties have less contact with the public during their campaign for the elections. Meanwhile, the only party whose workers remained upbeat before the elections and even on the Election Day was Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf.
The only party whose candidates have done well in terms of holding public gatherings is Jamaat-e-Islami. JI had announced most of its candidates well before the announcement of the election date and they were busy in electioneering in the respective constituencies in Peshawar.
There are total of over 10 million voters (12,266,157) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with more than 7 million (7,008,533) male voters and 5.2 million female voters to vote for their favorite candidate on May 11.
While in Peshawar there are total of 1.3 million voters out of while over eight lac voters are male and over 5 lac voters are female. There were 970 polling stations set up in Peshawar for four National Assembly and 11 provincial assembly seats on which around 277 candidates (65 on NA seats and 212 on provincial assembly seats.
Caretaker Information Minister visits Election Cell: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Caretaker Minister for Information & Public Relations, Mossarat Qadeem, Chief Secretary Ghulam Dastagir Akhtar, Secretary Home, Muhammad Azam Khan, IGP Ihsan Ghani, Secretary Information Azmat Hanif Orakzai, and other high ups of the provincial government paid a visit to Election Monitoring Cell established in the Media Centre of the Directorate of Information, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Peshawar on Saturday.
The Information Minister told the participants about the performance of the Cell and also threw lights on the update reports received from Election Commission, public and private institutions and various media channels.
She said that violation of election rules and other concerned incidents were being taken in to the notice of the district administration and other concerned high ups.
Initiatives taken in this regard were also published for the awareness of masses. Besides the web sites of Information Department and Election Commission, the cell was also assisted by FAFEN. Moreover, all the Regional Offices of Information Department and its staff were deputed for the said purpose, she concluded.
Governor casts vote, urges people to fully participate in election process: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor, Engineer Shaukatullah exercised his right of verdict at the Polling station in Municipal Inter College for Girls in Peshawar on Saturday vide electoral serial No.325 in PK- I and NA � I constituencies.
Talking to media representatives on this occasion, the Governor said that he through the control room, working round the clock in FATA Secretariat, is in constant contact with respective authorities in entire FATA and till now the situation is normal.
People are casting their votes peacefully through out the province and FATA, he remarked.
He also appealed to every voter to come to polling booths and cast their vote. We have to take this country ahead and through the election process we have got the opportunity to exercise our right of verdict to make this possible, he said.
