The Finance Ministry has released Rs 71 million for the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for immediate expenses.
The government has granted the ECP with a supplementary grant worth Rs 5 billion on Wednesday.
Around Rs 710 million from the grant have been dispatched while the rest of the money will be released next month.
According to the ECP additional secretary, the Finance Ministry had assured the ECP that Rs 4 billion would be provided within a month.
The ECP had requested for the grant in January, maintaining that Rs 0.5 billion had been allocated for the army to provide security during elections, while a major chunk of the supplementary grant, Rs 1.259 billion, would be spent on polling staff expenditures.
According to the breakdown of the proposed expenditures submitted by Law Minister Farooq H Naek, Rs 1 billion would be spent on printing ballot papers, forms, envelopes, posters and placards; Rs 450 million for publicity; Rs 87.5 million for establishing improvised polling stations; Rs 148 million on procurement of election material and Rs 215 million on procurement and transportation of ballot boxes and voting screens.
The government spent Rs 1.85 billion for the polls held in 2008, while the army was given Rs 195 million for providing assistance.
Meanwhile, the printing of nomination papers has been completed. 100,000 nomination papers have been printed. White would be used for general seats, pink for women seats and yellow for minority and reserved seats.
The process of delivering the nomination papers is expected to be completed by March 18. The ECP has also summoned polling schemes from provincial election commissioners and has directed that polling stations should only be set up in government offices. The polling stations should not be at a distance of two kilometres and each polling station should not exceed 2,500 voters.
