ISLAMABAD, APR 2: Polling has ended for the election of members on 30 seats of the Senate for six years. There are 59 candidates running in the Upper House election.
Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar was elected senator on the technocrat seat with 224 votes, while Raja Ansar got 81 votes. Moreover, five votes rejected, sources said.
PPP’s Rana Mahmoodul Hasan was also elected senator with 224 votes. His opponent, Farzand Hussain, got 79 votes. A total of 310 votes were cast, and seven were rejected.
Independent candidate Faisal Vawda was also elected senator on a general seat, as was MQM’s Aamir Chishti, PPP’s Ashraf Ali Jatoi, Dost Ali Jaisar, PPP’s Kazim Ali Shah, Masroor Hassan and Nadeem Bhutto.
Also successful were PPP’s Sarmad Ali and Zameer Ghamro on the two technocrat seats. Rubina Qaimkhani and Quratul Ain Marri were elected on the two women’s seats, PPP’s Poonjo Bheel won the minority seat.
In Punjab, Muhammad Aurangzeb and Dr Musadik Malik were elected on the technocrat seat from the Punjab Assembly. Finance Minister Aurangzeb got 128 votes and Malik 121 votes. Dr Yasmin Rashid of the opposition PTI got 106 votes.
In Sindh Assembly, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-backed independent candidates, as well as the Jamaat-e-Islami boycotted the elections. Out of the 12 seats from Sindh, the PPP won 10 seats in the Senate, MQM and independent candidate one each.
The National Assembly as well as the Punjab, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assemblies had been turned into polling stations. In the National and provincial assemblies, voting commenced at the scheduled time of 9am, with the first ballot cast in the NA by PML-N MNA Saad Wasim.
Returning Officer Saeed Gul issued strict directives prohibiting the entry of visitors into the gallery, as the House had been turned into a polling station. He emphasised that only media personnel were allowed to observe the electoral process from the galleries.
“If there is an irrelevant person, remove them from the gallery,” Gul instructed the assembly secretary.
Polling in all the assemblies ended at the designated time of 4pm. In the National Assembly, the presiding officer directed to close all the doors. Reportedly, 310 out of the 328 MNAs cast their votes.
The ballot papers for technocrat and general seats were then separated.
Punjab Assembly
Polling has ended in the Punjab Assembly hall to vote for four candidates for women’s seats, and three each for technocrat and ulema seats. Moreover, two candidates are contesting the minority seat in the province. The candidates on seven general seats from the Punjab Assembly were earlier declared elected unopposed.
Also Read: Preparations complete for Senate elections tomorrow; ECP issues list of contenders
Returning Officer Ijaz Anwar Chauhan oversaw the polling process, with MPA Bilal Yameen from PP-6 casting the first vote.
Sindh Assembly
Meanwhile, in Karachi, the Sindh Assembly witnessed a flurry of activities as 164 out of 168 members prepared to exercise their voting rights for the 12 Senate seats from the province being contested by 19 candidates.
Dr Azra Pechuho cast the first vote and the last was polled by Mukesh Kumar Chawla when polling time ended at 4pm.
A total of 154 members of the Sindh Assembly cast their votes.
There are 11 candidates for general seats and three for women’s seats from Sindh. There are four candidates for technocrat seats and two for minority seats.
The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) holding the lion’s share of 117 members in the House, followed by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) Pakistan with 37. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has announced a boycott of the Senate elections.
There are nine independent members of the Sindh Assembly, two from the Jamaat-e-Islami, while one member of the JI and three from the Grand Democratic Alliance have yet to take oath. The GDA members will not be able to cast their votes in the Senate elections, thus, the number of eligible voters in the Sindh Assembly is 164.
KP Assembly
Meanwhile, the provincial election commissioner has postponed the Senate elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on the application of the opposition members.
Earlier in the day, the election commissioners had contacted the chief election commissioner on the request submitted by the opposition members in the KP Assembly seeking a postponement of the Senate elections.
Led by Ahmad Karim Kundi, the opposition highlighted concerns over the non-swearing-in of 25 members, asserting that this could impact the fairness of the electoral process.
Also Read: Here is how the Senate election voting process works
On the other hand, the Senate election in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly could not begin at the scheduled time of 9am despite the arrangements being complete and the election staff present in the assembly.
The Peshawar High Court had on March 27 directed the KP Assembly speaker to take oaths from the elected members of the reserved seats. Instead of taking the oath, the speaker filed a review petition in the court.
The speaker adopted the stance that he did not have the authority to call a session, let alone administer the oath.
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has made the KP Senate elections subject to the oaths of the newly elected members in the reserved seats. Azam Swati has challenged the conditional decision of the ECP.
Balochistan Assembly
All 11 candidates from the Balochistan Assembly have been elected unopposed. The candidates vying for a spot in the Senate from Balochistan in the upcoming elections to the Upper House of parliament were elected unopposed on all the seats on March 29.
The election commission announced that the candidates from Balochistan were elected unopposed on all seats of the Senate. The seats up for grabs from Balochistan were seven general seats, two women’s seats, and two technocrat seats.
ECP’s guidelines for MNAs
The election commission has issued guidelines for members participating in the voting process in the National Assembly. From the method of marking preferences on the ballot papers to restrictions on mobile phones inside polling booths, these instructions aimed to ensure transparency and adherence to democratic norms.
As per the instructions, a voter would have to enter the preferences on ballot papers through a ballpoint, ‘1’ should be written in front of the name of the first preferred candidate, and ‘2’ next to the name of the second preference.
The preference number should be entered in English or Urdu numerals only, and writing in both Urdu and English together will result in rejection of the vote, the ECP guidelines state.
They further say that a vote will be rejected if a number is not entered in the preference box. If the digit ‘1’ is entered in front of more than one name, the vote will not be counted.
The MNAs have been prohibited from taking mobile phones inside the polling booth and have been instructed to submit their phones before entering the booth.
