KARACHI: All polling and security-related arrangements have been finalised on Sindh’s 61 National Assembly and 130 provincial assembly constituencies with around 26.995 million registered voters set to elect their representatives on Thursday (today).

Ballot papers, boxes and other elections material have also been transported to the polling stations on Wednesday from the dispatch/display centres set up by the country’s election watchdog at the offices of district returning officers (DROs) and other places cross the province.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has established 19,008 polling stations in Sindh and 6,524 of them have been declared sensitive or highly sensitive.

There are 10,250 combined polling stations, 4,443 for male and 4,313 polling stations have been set up for female voters while there are a total of 65,005 polling booths and 34,160 of them are meant for male voters and 30,845 for women.

Polling set to begin from 8am and continue till 5pm without break

According to the data by the ECP, the overall registered voters in Sindh are 26,994,769 and 14,612,655 (54.13 per cent) of them are male and 12,382,114 (45.87 per cent) are women.

Polling will begin at 8am and continued till 5pm without any break.

The process to hand over election material to presiding officers was started on Wednesday, but there were reports of inordinate delay to kick of the transportation of such stuff to the respective polling station at various dispatch centres in the city.

Provincial Election Commissioner Sindh Sharifullah along with other officials visited various dispatch centres and monitored the transportation of election material in Karachi.

When media persons informed him that the supply of election material began after 3pm at some dispatch centres in Karachi where authorities kept the polling staff waiting for several hours, Mr Sharifullah was of the view that it was a gigantic activity and there was nothing serious as the staff would reach the polling stations along with election stuff in 30 minutes.

He also stated that the ECP in these elections had added a new clause in Form-45 which also required signature of candidates’ polling agents and copies of the form will be provided to all the concerned persons.

The Sindh police said that it had prepared a contingency plan for Thursday’s general elections under which 143,156 police personnel/volunteers would be deployed for security of all polling stations, buildings, polling material etc across the province.

There are a total of 14,052 polling buildings and 19008 polling stations in Sindh and 6,801 of them have been categorised as most sensitive, 6,550 sensitive and 5657 as normal polling stations.

The police stated that out of total 143156 policemen/volunteers, 95,400 will be deployed for security of polling stations, 10,648 personnel will be part of ‘quick response force’ while 37,108 would be volunteers/private security guards who would perform security duty.

There are 5,343 polling stations and 2,697 polling buildings for seven districts of Karachi and a total of 40,443 policemen are being be deployed for security in the provincial metropolis.

Similarly, for the nine districts of Hyderabad division, there are 4,431 polling stations and 3,783 polling buildings with deployment of 37,638 policemen while for 1,933 polling stations and 1,767 polling buildings in Mirpurkhas division a total 9,595 police personnel would be deployed for security duty.

Total 23928 policemen would be deployed for security in Shaheed Benazirabad division’s three districts with 2291 polling stations and 1753 polling buildings.

The report pointed out that there were 2738 polling stations and 2247 polling buildings in five districts of Larkana division where a total of 19544 policemen would be deployed for security on Feb 8.

There were 2277 polling stations and 1805 polling buildings in Sukkur’s three districts where a total of 17029 policemen would be deployed during the general election.

Besides, 10,000 Rangers personnel are also being deployed across the province for election security including deployment of 6,000 paramilitary soldiers in the provincial metropolis and 4,000 in the interior parts of the province.

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2024