80,000 troops out on the street as Pak votes

Karachi: Pakistan goes to polls on Monday and 80,000 troops are out on the streets to maintain law and order.

Troops from the Pakistan Army, Rangers, Frontier Corps and Frontier Constabulary have all been deployed in areas designated as "sensitive".

Thousands of policemen have also fanned out across the four provinces.

The last day of campaigning ended on a bloody note on Saturday with a suicide attack at a Pakistan People's Party (PPP) office in Parachinar town of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) on the border with Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, opinion polls say it could be a hung Parliament even as efforts by the PPP and Nawaz Sharif to forge a grand coalition have fallen through.

Sharif indicated that there was no chance of seat adjustments with the PPP nor was there any hints if they had resolved their differences over reinstating the sacked judges.

The former Pakistan prime minister did not even indicate if they had taken forward the idea of a coalition government discussed earlier this week.

An Election Commission (EC) official was quoted by The Daily Times as saying that nearly four million voters out of the 81 million registered voters are bogus.

He said the voters were registered in two phases – 52 million in the first and 29 million in the second. The bogus entries were made in the second phase, he said, because the requirement of computerised national identity cards (CNICs) had been withdrawn.

The official also added that another five million might not be able to vote for various other reasons.

The polls are also under intense international scrutiny, particularly from America.

Three US senators will be in the country for observing the election processes, reported The Daily Times.

They include Joseph Biden, who had been in the US presidential race, Chuck Hagel and former Democrat presidential nominee, John Kerry.