30% increase in non-Muslim voters in Pakistan

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The number of non-Muslim voters in the country has climbed to 3.63 million from 2.77m registered in electoral rolls for the 2013 general elections — which shows an overall increase of 0.860m or 30 per cent in the last five years.

According to a local media outlet, Hindu voters continue to maintain their majority among the minorities, but they no more constitute over half of the total non-Muslim voters as was the case in 2013.

Before 2013, the number of Hindu voters was 1.40m while a total number of voters of minority communities was 2.77m — the former being higher than the collective number of all other minorities. The number of Hindu voters now stands at 1.77m. Most of the Hindu voters are based in Sindh, wherein two districts they form over 40 per cent of total registered voters.

The second largest group of non-Muslim voters is of Christians, which totals 1.64m with over one m settled in Punjab followed by over 200,000 in Sindh. Their number has grown at a relatively high pace as compared to Hindu voters as it was 1.23m before 2013 general polls.

The total number of Ahmedi voters is 167,505 — most of whom reside in Punjab, followed by Sindh and then Islamabad. The number in 2013 stood at 115,966.

Most of the 8,852 Sikh voters are settled in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) followed by Sindh and Punjab. Their presence in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is more than their combined strength in Balochistan and Islamabad. They numbered 5,934 in 2013.

The number of Parsi voters has grown from 3,650 in 2013 to 4,235. Majority of them is settled in Sindh followed by KP. The number of Buddhist voters has increased from 1,452 in 2013 to 1,884. Most of them live in Sindh and Punjab.

There are a total of 31,543 voters from the Bahai community on the electoral rolls.

In 2013 there were 809 Jewish voters in the country — 427 women and 382 men, but in the current documents, there’s no mention of Jew voters in the 2018 elections.