The Provincial Election Commission has completed all arrangements to hold fair, free and transparent elections on 61 National as well as 130 Provincial Assemblies general seats in Sindh.
This was stated by Provincial Election Commissioner Sindh Sharifullah and Joint Election Commissioner Nazar Abbas while addressing a joint press conference here at the PEC office on Monday. Sharifullah said a apart from 61 general seats of the National Assembly and 130 of the Provincial Assembly, polls will be held on 14 reserved seats of women in the National Assembly 29 reserved seats of women and 9 seats of minorities in the Sindh Assembly.
As many as 26,994,769 registered voters will exercise their right of franchise for which19,008 polling stations have been set up by the Election Commission of Pakistan, PEC said and added that all arrangements were in the final stage and now we are preparing for the polling day.
He said polling material had been dispatched to the districts and the polling scheme was finalized on January 24 after receiving data from the polling staff, they were provided required training. He informed that the printing process of the ballot papers had already been completed and the same have been delivered to all districts while bags are ready which will be delivered to the polling staff on February 07. All District Returning officers have devised a transportation plan from where ballot papers will be dispatched and after completion of the polling and counting process, the ballot papers will be taken back to the points already notified by the DROs, Sharifullah said. He said that all facilities for the Returning Officers were provided at the designated points where results will be announced.
He said with the support of the provincial caretaker government, a security plan was devised and the CCTV cameras would be installed at all highly sensitive polling stations. He said the bags containing polling material would be handed over to the presiding officers on February 07 and they will be taken to the polling stations.
Sharifullah said on February 08, polling would start at about 8 am and then presiding officers would return to the same point from where they departed to the polling station and hand over the bags and results to the returning officers concerned.
He said the facilities have been arranged for media persons covering polling activities at the provincial Election Commission office, RO offices and other points where results would be prepared so that they could ensure media coverage efficiently. Joint Election Commissioner Nazar Abass informed that in Sindh 6,524 polling stations were declared as highly sensitive and the District Returning Officers will be responsible for all security issues in consultation with the security forces.
