NA 45 Kurram: Counting of votes starts, Imran Khan gets lead

Counting of votes has been started in the constituency NA-45 Kurram by-elections as polling ended at the scheduled time at 5:00 pm on Sunday.

According to the 24News HD TV channel’s initial reports, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan has taken a lead against the candidate of the ruling alliance Jamil Khan.

The unofficial and unauthentic results said that Imran Khan received 93 votes against rival Jamil Chamkani who bagged only 33 votes in polling station number 143.

At polling station number 41, Imran Khan obtained 94 votes while Jamil Khan received only 17 votes. 

From polling station number 136, the candidate of the ruling alliance received 16 votes and the PTI candidate got only 4 votes.

The polling for the by-election on National Assembly seat NA-45, Kurram started on Sunday morning in a peaceful manner. The balloting started at 8 am and continued till 5 pm. 

Among 142 polling stations, 119 have been declared ‘sensitive’ and 24 are declared ‘highly sensitive’. 

There are a total 198,618 registered voters in NA 45 constituency, and among them, the number of male voters is 111,349, and a number of woman voters is 87,269. 

According to the Kurram district police officer, as many as 2,100 policemen have been deputed to perform security duty during the balloting. 

On Oct 21, a four-member bench of the Election Commission of Pakistan declared former prime minister and PTI Chief Imran Khan disqualified in Toshakhana reference. But the PTI head moved to the Islamabad High Court against the ECP verdict. 

During the hearing the case on Oct 24, IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah remarked that PTI Chief Imran Khan had not been barred from contesting in future elections.

After the observation by the IHC CJ, the ECP allowed Imran to run for the new polls.