MULTAN – The vote count is underway as polling concluded for a by-election in NA-148 (Multan) on Sunday.
Voting started at 8 am and continued without any break till 5 pm. As many as 444,231 voters were eligible to exercise their right to vote at 933 polling booths of 275 polling stations, out of which 69 have been declared sensitive.
The seat had fallen vacant after the election of Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani as a senator. Eight candidates are contesting the by-election. However, the real competition is between Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-backed Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) candidate Barrister Taimur Altaf Malik and Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) Ali Qasim Gillani. In the general election, Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani defeated Taimur Malik with a narrow margin of 293 votes.
As per the Election Commission Pakistan (ECP) Punjab chapter, foolproof security arrangements had been made with the installation of surveillance cameras and walk-through gates at the sensitive polling stations. The Election Monitoring and Control Centre had been set up to entertain public complaints regarding the ongoing polling process.
