Voting Rights Denied: Women Prohibited from Casting Votes in Swabi and Talagang Areas
SWABI: Women voters at a village of NA-20 in Swabi district have been banned to cast vote,
The locals have prohibited women to exercise their right to vote in Adeena village of Swabi district.
According to reports, the election staff has been present at the polling station, while women voters are not being sighted.
It is said that around 6,000 women in Adeena village have not been allowed to use their right to vote in the election.
Moreover, in NA-59 in Punjab, women voters were found absent at polling stations in conservative Talagang district of Potohar region.
According to reports, not a single voter from 3,101 women voters cast vote at four polling stations of the district.
Low Voter Turnout: Half of Polling Time Elapses in Pakistan Elections.
The voter turnout was low in Pakistan general elections on Thursday as half of the polling time elapsed, several journalists claimed.
“According to reports from different parts of the country, voters are present in large numbers at the polling stations but the polling process has been deliberately kept slow,” senior journalist Hamid Mir said in a post on X.
Moments before tens of millions of people headed to polling stations to cast their votes, the caretaker government suspended the mobile phone services given the incidents of terrorism in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Citizens also experienced internet outages in multiple regions, according to an independent internet monitor.
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Realtime network data showed that internet blackouts were in effect in multiple regions of Pakistan in addition to mobile network disruptions, the NetBlocks said in a post on X.
Several journalists and politicians called for immediate restoration of the two services. Voters at the polling stations also complained of facing communication problems after the government’s decision.
Mir, who is associated with a private news channel, claimed that less than 100 votes were cast in the first four hours of the polling time in polling stations where hundreds of voters were waiting for their turn.
Such a slowdown has nothing to do with the internet suspension, he added.
According to Dawn editor (Kyber Pakhtunkhwa) Ismail Khan, the voter turnout across the province averaged nine per cent by 11:30am.
“It may pick up post lunch time,” he said.
Another journalist Syed Talat Hussain shared a graph on X, showing the overall turnout since the elections in 1970.
“So far nation-wide the turnout is lower than what has been the trend in the first 4 hours,” he said and added that urban centres were reporting 10 per cent lower than the usual average.
He was hopeful that the process would pick up momentum in the second half. But he warned that if it did not turn out then the situation might mirror that of 1997.
Aaj News reported that the polling staff and material were late in many constituencies, leading to delay in the process. Reporters in Hyderabad, Sukkur, and Jacobabad blamed the internet for the low turnout, but they hoped voters would arrive in the second half.
The election day, February 8, is a public holiday in Pakistan. But many people fear rigging and disturbance in the law and order situation after terrorist attacks in the two provinces and verdicts of cases against former prime minister Imran Khan.
Shamil Ahmed of Aaj News stated that the polling process was slow due to the low number of voters.
Political analyst Mosharraf Zaidi was of the view that suspension of mobile services would likely suppress voter turnout and undermine the process of casting votes.
“This will have the opposite effect of the intended benefits of an election during polycrisis,” he said, “it is 1300 hrs in Pakistan. It is not too late. Restore mobile services now.”
Reports said that no women have so far cast votes in the PK-48 constituency in Haripur despite staff present in the station. The process was also slow in Khyber’s Bara.
In one of its videos on X, the PTI claimed that a large number of voters turned out in NA-53. But it was not the case everywhere, according to the party.
PTI leader Hammad Azhar claimed that half of polling time elapsed yet the polling did not even start at the polling station NA-129 in Lahore. “The presiding officer says he cannot contact anyone at the RO office or ECP because mobile services are down.”
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