The first-ever provincial elections began Saturday in Pakistan’s erstwhile semi-autonomous tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) comprising sevendistricts was merged with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province in May 2018after a constitutional amendment.
The law set aside 24 seats in the KP assembly for the formerFATA region. However, due to administrative reasons elections on those seatswere not held with the general polls held in July in the country last year.
According to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP),polling began at 8:00 a.M. Local time in all the seven tribal districts amidheightened security. As many as 34,497 security personnel have been deployed inthe polling booths.
As many as 285 candidates, including two women, arecontesting for 16 seats. Another four seats are reserved for women and one fornon-Muslim. These seats will be awarded to the political parties on the basisof their share in the 16 contested seats.
The ECP said 2.80 million voters — 1.67 millions of whomare men and 1.13 million women — will exercise their franchise in 1,897polling stations. The parties which fielded their candidates inthe election include Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Awami National Party(ANP), Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Qaumi WatanParty (QWP).