Pakistan Muslim League –Nawaz (PML-N)’s Babar Anwar was leading the race for the National Assembly seat from Haripur’s NA-19 constituency, with Dr Raja Amir Zaman of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) at second place, according to unofficial results compiled till the filing of this report.
Voting for the by-election in National Assembly constituency NA-19 ended peacefully at 5pm Sunday with no reported disruptions. Per results from 310 polling stations, Anwar bagged 1,001,673 votes with PTI’s Zaman having accumulated 55,000 votes.
While nine candidates are contesting for NA membership from the constituency, the real contest was between Babar Anwar of the PML-N and Dr Raja Amir Zaman of the PTI.
There are 513 polling stations in the constituency, out of which 209 were declared sensitive while 42 were declared highly sensitive. Over 15,000 police and Frontier Corps (FC) officials were deployed in the constituency due to security threats and Section 144 remained imposed throughout the district.
Tahir Qureshi is the candidate for Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Safeer Muhammad Gujjar from All Pakistan Muslim League (APML) and two independent candidates Alam Zaib Shah and Aqeel Durrani are also part of the contest.
Raja Aamir Zaman of PTI had won on this seat in the 2013 general election but Election Tribunal had ordered re-poll on seven polling stations after which Umar Ayyub Khan of PML-N had secured the victory by 600 votes. Later on, Supreme Court had ordered re-election on this seat.