By NNN-Xinhua
Islamabad : Pakistan is holding elections for the lower house of parliament and assemblies in its four provinces on Monday. The following are some basic facts about the elections:
The National Assembly of Pakistan consists of 342 seats: 272 general seats, 60 reserved seats for women and 10 seats for non-Muslims. The reserved seats will be allocated to parties according to how many votes they win.
The 272 seats for contest are distributed on the basis of population size. Under this system, 148 seats will be in Punjab province, 61 in Sindh, 35 in North West Frontier, 14 in Baluchistan, 12 in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and two in the capital Islamabad.
The voting age is 18 and there are more than 80 million registered voters out of a population of around 160 million.
The main parties contesting the election are: the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q), the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N).
The Election Commission, an independent and autonomous constitutional body, will be responsible for conducting free, fair and transparent elections.
A total of 35,868 polling stations will be set on election day. Of the total, 30 percent are categorized as “sensitive” and 14 percent as “most sensitive.” The label “sensitive” means reinforced security measures are needed at those polling stations.
The elections were postponed from Jan. 8 to Feb. 18 following the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Dec. 27.