Pakistan Elections: Imran Khan's Party-Backed Independents Pose Tough Challenge to Sharif's PML-N

Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party-backed independents on Thursday posed a tough challenge to candidates from three-time former PM Nawaz Sharif’s party in the crucial Punjab province, according to initial trends of the general elections marred by sporadic violence.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had deprived the jailed 71-year-old former cricketer-turned-politician’s party of the electoral symbol of ‘bat’ over its failure to hold intra-party polls according to its Constitution, forcing it to field independent candidates.

The polling started at 8.00 AM and continued without any break till 5.00 PM. A countrywide public holiday was declared to enable more than 12 crore voters to cast their ballots. The polling percentage is not yet known.

In the 2018 elections, overall voter turnout across the nation was 51.7 per cent. Counting of votes began following the conclusion of the polling and the results of individual polling stations started to pour in after the mandatory one-hour restriction ended. But it may take a couple of hours before the complete result of any constituency is available.

In total 266 National Assembly seats were up for grabs out of 336, but polling was postponed on at least one seat after a candidate was killed in a gun attack in Bajaur. Another 60 seats are reserved for women and 10 for minorities, and are allotted to the winning parties based on proportional representation. A party must win 133 seats out of 265 being contested to form the next government.

Private TV channels began reporting results on the basis of partial counting, which showed that Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and PTI-supported independent candidates were neck-in-neck in the most populous Punjab province, which sends almost half of the representatives to the National Assembly.

In most of the constituencies, the candidates of the two parties were either leading or in second place. Sharif and his younger brother Shehbaz were leading in their respective seats from Lahore.

In Sindh, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) candidates were leading in most of the constituencies, with its leaders Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Asif Ali Zardari ahead in their constituencies.

(With PTI inputs)