ECP ready to hold by-polls in Lahore’s NA 120 on Sunday

• Kalsoom, Faisal Mir and Yasmeen prominent among 44 candidates

Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has finalised all arrangements to hold the by-election in NA-120 Lahore-III in a free, fair, transparent and peaceful manner on Sunday.

As many as 44 candidates including 32 independent and 12 ticket holders of different political parties are taking part in the bye-election, an ECP official said. Candidates of major political parties included Begum Kalsoom Nawaz from the Pakistan Muslim League-N, Faisal Mir from the Pakistan People’s Party and Yasmeen Rashid from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

The official said that the constituency has total 3,21,786 registered voters, out of which 1,79,642 are male while 1,42,144 are female voters. He said that total 220 polling stations including 103 male, 98 female and 19 combined polling station have been set up for the bye-election. In total 573 polling booths, 312 male and 261 female pooling booths have been set up by the ECP.

He said that 220 presiding officers, 573 assistant presiding officers and 573 polling officers would discharge their duties on the polling day. He said that seven monitoring teams have been constituted with 20 officials from Islamabad and four provinces for the bye-election. These teams with having cameras, transport and supporting staff will start their duties from Saturday evening.

He said that these teams would monitor the observance of the code of conduct and performance of biometric machines and send a report to the ECP. The official said that these teams would also immediately report to the returning officer concerned, district returning officer, provincial election commissioner, Central Monitoring Committee of Islamabad and the ECP in case of violation of the code of conduct in the constituency through telephone, fax, mobile application or email.

He said that senior officials of ECP’s IT wing were also included in these teams, who will examine the performance and other aspects of BVM machines on technical grounds and send a report to the ECP. He said that the commission was strictly monitoring the code of conduct for the bye-election and never allow any candidate or political party to violate the code.

He said that the commission has already served a notice to the federal and the provincial ministers and directed them not to participate in political activities otherwise strict legal action would be taken against them.