Polling ends in historic Khyber Pakhtunkhwa elections

Polling ended for the historic elections to the 16 seats of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly in the first ever provincial assembly polls that were held in the merged tribal districts.

The tribal districts were previously known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) but were merged to the provincial assembly last year.

Previously residents could vote for the FATA areas in the national assembly. According to a representative of the provincial election body, 285 candidates stood up for elections. Among them, only two were women.

Polling ended at 5pm but voters who were inside the polling station were allowed to cast their votes even past the deadline.
According to the unofficial results that started to come in on news channels at 11 30pm, the independents were leading on eight seats while the PTI came in at second, with its candidates leading on four seats.

The JUI-F and the JI were leading in two constituencies while the ANP led on only one seat. As many as 2.8 million residents of the merged tribal districts exercised their franchise today.

No major untoward incident was reported from most districts, however, at a polling station in PK-103 constituency of Mohmand, an exchange of fire took place between the supporters of two political parties.

The firing left two men — a worker of the Awami National Party and a passerby — injured, according to police. Voting continued at the polling station following the incident and police are making efforts to arrest the suspects.

Tens of thousands of troops and special police units were sent to the province for polling day but there were several complaints of vote-rigging and influence peddling by some of the candidates and their supporters.