Voting for by-election in PK-68 underway

DERA ISMAIL KHAN: Voting is underway for by-election on provincial assembly constituency PK-68 Dera Ismail Khan-V in the peaceful and conducive atmosphere here on Monday.

There are 13 candidates in the run for the seat which had fallen vacant after Javed Akbar was disqualified by the election tribunal in a fake degree case.

Polling began at 8 am and is scheduled to continue till 5pm amid all security and logistic arrangements to facilitate voters and maintain peace in the polling area.

According to political pundits, tough contest is expected between PTI candidate Ehtesham Javed Akbar and a well-known politician Syed Murid Kazim Shah who is contesting as independent candidate and has backing of PPP, ANP and JUI-F.

District Election Commissioner Muhammad Tariq Khan said effective measures had been made to hold free and fair election with setting up a total of 108 polling stations for 127,617 registered voters in the constituency. He said out of the total polling stations, 54 were combined while 27 each had been set up separately for male and female.

People are enthusiastically participating in the election process and exercising their right to vote in a peaceful atmosphere. As part of security arrangements 3,200 police personnel are guarding the polling area with deployment of the seven including a lady constable at each polling station to ensure peace in the vicinity.

Police sources said effective measures had been taken with an objective to hold the re-election in a peaceful manner and added 31 polling stations had been declared highly sensitive, 27 sensitive and 51 as normal.