More than 17,000 candidates to contest for elections in Pakistan

According to Dawn, more than 17,000 candidates are running in today’s Pakistani elections. 266 candidates will be chosen by the electorate to serve in the Pakistan National Assembly, which will subsequently choose the next prime minister by majority vote. In parallel, voters will choose representatives to each province assembly, who will subsequently choose provincial chief executives through a comparable procedure.

Meanwhile, elections have been postponed in one national and three provincial assembly constituencies due to the deaths of contesting candidates. This includes NA-8 (Bajaur), PK-22 (Bajaur), PK-91 (Kohat) and PP-266 (Rahim Yar Khan). Voters elsewhere will cast two votes each — one for each of the two assemblies.
In all, 17,816 candidates are in the running, of which 12,695 will be contesting for provincial assembly seats and 5,121 for the National Assembly, as per Dawn.

There are 16,930 men, 882 women, and 4 transgender individuals among them. Among them, 6,031 candidates—5,726 men and 275 women—are running on the platform of a political party. Eleven hundred and seventy-seven people—11,174 men, 607 women, and four transgender people—are running as independents. According to Pakistan Today, the Caretaker Interior Ministry of Pakistan has set up a control room to keep an eye on the country’s general election situation.

The control room includes representatives of all relevant institutions, including the Interior Department, police and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to perform their duties in the control room. Furthermore, information sharing between law enforcement agencies and other relevant agencies is being ensured in this room, according to Pakistan Today report.