Islamabad (Web Desk): Caretaker Federal Minister for Information, Broadcasting and Parliamentary Affairs Murtaza Solangi on Tuesday said that on February 8 over 120 million Pakistanis would cast their votes to elect public representatives of their choice to run the affairs of the state as envisaged in the Constitution.
Addressing a press conference along with Minister for Interior Dr Gohar Ijaz, Murtaza Solangi said that last year on August 17, 2023, after oath-taking of the caretaker cabinet, he had committed in a press conference that the caretaker government would provide all possible assistance to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to conduct free and fair elections.
He said that rumour-mongers’ claims, that elections would not be held on one or the other pretext and caretaker setup would linger on, had proven wrong.
The minister said that the Ministry of Information yesterday had launched an online media helpline for the convenience of local and foreign journalists during the elections.
Solangi said that the Pakistani nation had been fighting the scourge of terrorism for decades and between 2008 and 2013 law and order situation was not good. He added that the 2008 elections had to be postponed for one month following the martyrdom of Benazir Bhutto.
The minister said that a few incidents of terrorism could not deter the masses who would come out to use their right of vote in a large numbers to elect their representatives to run the affairs of the state.
The general elections are scheduled to be held on February 8 (Thursday) for 266 National Assembly and 593 general seats of four provincial assemblies.
As per the electoral body, 90,675 polling stations have been established in all four provinces.
A total of 5,121 candidates are in the race for the National Assembly seats. These include 4,807 male, 312 female and two transgender.
For the four provincial assemblies, 12,695 candidates are in the field including 12,123 male, 570 women and two transgender.
There are a total of 128,585,760 registered voters in the country.
Punjab has the most number of 73, 207,896 registered voters followed by Sindh with 26,994,769, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) with 21,928,119, Balochistan with 5,371,947 and federal capital Islamabad 1,083,029.