Muzaffarabad (Web Desk): Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is set to form the next government after emerging as the largest political party in the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Legislative Assembly elections held on July 25.
According to the unofficial results announced by the AJK Election Commission, the PTI has won 25 seats.
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has won 11 seats while Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) secured six seats.
Muslim Conference and Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Party (JKPP) have secured one seat each.
Barrister Sultan Mahmood Chaudhry, Khawaja Ahmed Farooq, Sardar Tanvir Ilyas, Diwan Khan Chughtai, Chaudhry Arshad and Chaudhry Anwar-ul-Haq have won their seats.
PML-N candidates Raja Farooq Haider and Shah Ghulam Qadir have also retained their seats.
Former AJK premier and chief of Muslim Conference Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan has been declared successful on LA-14 Bagh.
As per the AJK EC, a total of 587 candidates contested the elections in 33 constituencies of Azad Kashmir districts and 121 candidates on 12 constituencies of Jammu and Kashmir refugees settled in Pakistan.
The AJK EC stated that voter turn-out in the general elections remained 58% as compared to the turnout of the 2016 election, which was 65 percent.
The number of total registered voters was 3.2 million, out of which 1.7 million were male and 1.4 million were female voters.
The total number of votes polled was 1, 931,724, whereas 17,418 votes were rejected.
The PTI bagged 32.05 percent of the votes while PML-N and PPP secured 25.65 and 18.28 percent votes respectively.
Nearly 40,000 security personnel have been entrusted with the task to guard 5,123 polling stations, of which 1,209 were declared “sensitive” while 826 stations “most sensitive”.
Accordingly, the AJK government also granted magisterial powers to 250 officers apart from regular magistrates and presiding officers in a bid to maintain law and order during the polling day.