LARKANA: Grand Dem­o­cratic Alliance’s (GDA) candidate Moazzam Ali Abb­asi won the by-election held for the Sindh Assembly’s constituency PS-11 (Larkana-II) on Thursday, according to unofficial results.

While Mr Abbasi bagged 31,557 votes, his rival Jamil Soomro of the Pakistan Peoples Party could get 26,021 votes, according to the unofficial results received from all the 138 polling stations that were set up for the by-election.

Polling was held in a peaceful environment and no untoward incident was reported anywhere in the constituency.

Special security measures were put in place, including deployment of Rangers and the army in the constituency, in addition to the police.

Polling began at 8am and continued till 5pm without break.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had announced the re-election after the Supreme Court unseated Mr Abbasi, who had won the seat in the 2018 general election.

The total number of registered voters in the constituency is 152,614 — 83,016 men and 69,598 women.

Mr Soomro, who is political secretary of PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, cast his vote in a polling station established at the public health engineering office while Mr Abbasi cast his at a polling station in a government-run primary school.

Both Mr Soomro and Mr Abbasi talked to reporters after casting their votes and also visited some other polling stations in the constituency.

The voting process was quite fast in the morning, but later its pace slowed down.

GDA supporters raised objections over the visits of elected representatives of PPP, including Mr Bhutto-Zardari, Khursheed Ahmed Junejo, Nadir Magsi, to various polling stations.

PPP secretary general Farhatullah Babar in a letter to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) pointed to delay in the start of polling at some polling stations for women due to late arrival of women police personnel.

In-charge of PPP’s central election cell Taj Haider in a letter to the CEC drew his attention towards complaints by Mr Bhutto-Zardari, who had accused Rangers of interfering in the political process, checking voter slips and harassing polling agents and candidates.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2019